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THE ORATIONS ON 

BUKKER HILL MONUMFNT 
THE CHARACTER OF V/ASHINGTON 
AND THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH 



BY 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



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UNITED STATES OF A^IERICA. 




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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



THE ORATIONS ON 

BUNKER HILL MONUMENT 
THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON 
AND THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH 



DANIEL WEBSTER 







NEW YORK . : • CINCINNATI • '. . CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

1894 



■ \A/S 



/ 



Copyright, 1894, by 
American Book Company. 



WEBSTER S ORATIONS EC. ENG. CLAS. 



Printed by permission of Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co., 
tlie authorized publishers of Webster's works. 



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XClm. tlrfgon 

flew L'or»5. "Q- S- B. 



INTRODUCTION. 



It is a fact worthy of notice that, among all the masters of elo- 
quence known to history, only four have produced works which 
have been generally recognized as contributions to the perma- 
nent literature of the world. These were Demosthenes in an- 
cient Athens, Cicero in old Rome, Edmund Burke in Great 
Britain, and Daniel Webster in America. A comparison of the 
public discourses of these four great orators reveals, of course, 
many differences resulting from the diversity of race, time, cir- 
cumstance, and the character of the audiences to whom they 
were addressed. A closer examination, however, will disclose 
numerous similarities in their fundamental construction, going 
far to show that the principles Of true eloquence are always and 
everywhere the same, and that the art which swayed the minds 
of multitudes of men twenty centuries ago remains in essential 
points as unchanged as human thought itself. Between the ora- 
tions of Demosthenes, so distinctively ancient and Grecian, and 
those of Webster, so distinctively modern and American, one 
may detect a striking resemblance. Both are characterized by 
the same sustained appeal to the understanding and by the 
same clear-cut, vigorous, and perfectly intelligible course of rea- 
soning. In their unadorned simplicity each is the work of a 
sculptor rather than painter. " To test Webster's oratory, which 

5 



6 INTR OD UC TION. 

has ever been very attractive to me," said the late Dr. Francis 
Lieber, " I read a portion of my favorite speeches of Demos- 
thenes, and then read, always aloud, parts of Webster ; then re- 
turned to the Athenian : and Webster stood the test." This re- 
semblance was not the result of any study of ancient models on 
Mr. Webster's part, nor of any conscious or unconscious effort 
to imitate the masterpieces of Athenian eloquence. It was due 
rather to a similarity of intellectual powers wholly independent 
of time, or race, or other environment. 

The quality of Webster's imagination, which was of an histori- 
cal rather than poetic cast, had much to do with the power and 
pecuhar charm of his oratory. But it was his simplicity of dic- 
tion, and his perfect mastery of pure, idiomatic EngHsh, which 
gave to his discourses their distinctive classic elegance, and made 
them worthy of a permanent place in our literature. As speci- 
mens, therefore, of a correct, clear, and vigorous style of com- 
position, full of warmth and vitality, these orations are worthy 
of the most careful attention of every one who would perfect him- 
self in the use of the English tongue ; as notable examples of 
persuasive discourse, logical, forcible, and convincing, they es- 
pecially commend themselves to those who aspire to distinction 
as public speakers ; as containing lessons of the purest and most 
disinterested patriotism, they appeal to Americans everywhere, 
and should be read and studied by every American youth. 

Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury (now Franklin), N.H., 
Jan. 18, 1782. His father, who was a farmer, had served as 
a soldier in both the French and Indian and the Revolution- 
ary Wars, and later became a member of the State Legis- 
lature, and judge of the county court. Being brought up in 
poverty, in a region at that time the very outskirts of civiliza- 



INTRODUCriON. 7 

tion, the boy had none of the opportunities which are now sup- 
posed to be indispensable to the making of a great man. His 
mother taught him to read, and as the schools which he attended 
during his childhood were extremely inefficient, it is probable 
that the best part of his early education was acquired at home. 
Being a delicate child, he was generally exempt from the hard 
tasks required of other boys in his condition of life, and, while 
much of his time was devoted to play, he developed a passionate 
eagerness for books. " I read what I could get to read," he 
says, " went to school when I could, and when not at school was 
a farmer's youngest boy, not good for much, for want of health 
and strength, but expected to do something. In those boyish 
days there were two things which I did dearly love, — reading and 
playing, passions which did not cease to struggle when boyhood 
was over, (ha\'e they yet altogether ?) and in regard to which 
neither cita mors nor the victoria laeta could be said of either." 

When fourteen years of age, he was sent to the Phillips Exeter 
Academy. There he made his first acquaintance with the w^orld, 
suffering much from the ridicule of his schoolmates, to whom his 
rustic clothes and uncouth manners were a source of great mer- 
riment. Although he made rapid progress in his studies, his lack 
of self-confidence was such, that he found it impossible to stand 
up and "speak a piece" before the school. At the end of nine 
months it was thought best that he should return home ; and his 
father made arrangements whereby he should continue his studies 
under the tuition of a clergyman, the Rev. Samuel Wood, at 
Boscawen. This change was made in order that the lad might 
the more quickly complete his preparation for college ; for, not- 
withstanding the poverty of the family, his father had decided 
to give him as thorough an education as was then available. He 



8 INTRODUCTIOiV. 

remained with Dr. Wood only six months, and in August, 1797, 
contrived to enter Dartmouth College, from which he was duly- 
graduated in 1 80 1. The college was at that time scarcely equal 
in efficiency to any well-equipped high school of the present day ; 
and Webster's scholarship was neither extensive nor profound. 
He read everything that came to hand, and whatever was worthy 
of remembrance he never forgot. He acquired a fair knowledge 
of Latin literature, and gained a smattering of Greek and mathe- 
matics. He was not only considered the best general scholar in 
the college, but he was looked upon by both the faculty and the 
students as a remarkable man with an extraordinary career before 
him. He soon overcame the boyish timidity w^hich had been so 
much in his way at Exeter, and developed an especial inclination 
for public speaking. Indeed, the fame of his eloquence extended 
beyond the college walls ; and in 1800 he was invited by the towns- 
people of Hanover to deliver the Fourth-of-July oration in their 
village. He had not then completed his eighteenth year; yet in 
that youthful speech, his first public utterance on questions of na- 
tional import, there was a distinct foreshadowing of the enduring 
work which he was afterwards to perform for his countrymen and 
the world. It was, of course, crude and imitative, as would be ex- 
pected of a boy ; its language was florid in the extreme, and its 
general style was that of the " spread eagle," full of bombast and 
figures of rhetoric ; but in its thought and leading purpose there 
breathed the same manly, patriotic spirit that runs through all 
his maturer utterances, and distinguishes them from the com- 
monplace oratory of political demagogues. 

Immediately after leaving college, Mr. Webster began the 
study of law in the office of Thomas W. Thompson of Salis- 
bury ; but, wishing to earn money to help his elder brother 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

Ezekiel to go through college, he soon afterwards went to Frye- 
burg, Me,, and took charge of a small academy there. In the 
following year he returned to Salisbury, and remained with Mr. 
Thompson until 1804; then, desiring better opportunities for 
extending his legal knowledge, he went to Boston, where he en- 
tered the office of Christopher Gore, and where, in 1805, he was 
admitted to the bar. He began practicing in Boscawen ; and in 
1807, having built up a fairly good business there, he turned it 
over to his brother Ezekiel, and removed to Portsmouth, then 
the capital of the State. Being now fairly established in his pro- 
fession, he was married in 1808 to Grace Fletcher of Hopkin- 
ton. He soon distinguished himself as the foremost lawyer in 
the State, and attracted much attention by his eloquent utter- 
ances in opposing the declaration of war against Great Britain. 
In 181 2 he was elected to Congress by the Federalists, and on 
taking his seat was placed on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 
The first public act which brought him into prominence as a 
member of Congress was his introduction of a series of resolu- 
tions caUing for an inquiry concerning the announcement to the 
United States of the revocation of Napoleon's decrees against 
American shipping. This was followed a few months later by 
his first great speech in the House, — a speech in opposition 
to a bill for the encouragement of enlistments. In 18 14 he 
was reelected to Congress; and in 1816, at the expiration of his 
second term, he removed to Boston, where for seven years he 
devoted himself exclusively to the practice of his profession. In 
181 8, by his management of the celebrated Dartmouth College 
case, he achieved a success which not only placed him at the 
head of the American bar, but gave him great prominence as an 
able exponent and uncompromising defender of the Federal Con- 



1 o INTR ODUCTIOK. 

stitution. The Legislature of New Hampshire had passed an act 
virtually abrogating the original charter of the college, and pro- 
viding for the appointment of a new board of trustees. The old 
board contested the legality of this act ; and a suit against the 
new board, in action of trover for the college seal, was carried 
to the Superior Court of the State, where it was decided in favor 
of the defendants. Thereupon the case was carried to the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, where, through Mr. Webster's 
management, the judgment of the State court was reversed, and 
the act of the State Legislature was declared to be a violation of 
that clause of the Federal Constitution which prohibits the States 
from passing laws in impairment of contracts. The decision 
was of national importance, since it '' went further, perhaps, than 
any other in our history towards limiting State sovereignty, and 
extending the jurisdiction of the Federal Supreme Court." 

On Dec. 22, 1820, the two hundredth anniversary of the 
landing of the Pilgrims, Mr. Webster delivered his famous dis- 
course on the " First Settlement of New England," — the first of 
those great efforts which placed him among the foremost orators 
of the world. In 1822 he was again elected a representative to 
Congress, this time from Boston; and in 1824 and 1826 he was 
reelected. In 1827 he resigned his membership in the House to 
accept a seat in the Senate, where he remained, by successive 
reelections, until 1841. His oration on the laying of the corner 
stone of Bunker Hill Monument, in 1825, and that on Adams 
and Jefferson (1826), are among the noblest historical addresses 
ever dclivcrcHl, " "I1u' s])irit of these orations is that of the 
broadest patriotism enlightened by a clear perception of the 
fundamental importance of the Federal union between the States, 
and an ever-present consciousness of the mighty future of our 



INTRODUCTION. ii 

country, and its moral significance in the history of the world." 
In the Bunker Hill oration he appeared at his best. His style 
had been perfected, and he " touched his highest point in the 
difficult task of commemorative oratory." Eighteen years later, 
upon the completion of the monument, he was called upon to 
deliver a second address at the same place and upon the same 
theme. This later effort, although it failed to attain to the mas- 
sive dignity and grandeur of the first, must always be regarded as 
one of the finest examples of patriotic oratory to which Americans 
have ever listened. 

From the beginning of his career in the United States Senate, 
Mr. Webster was naturally recognized as one of the most influ- 
ential men in the nation, and, had he been more distinctively a 
partisan, it is not improbable that he would eventually have 
occupied the President's chair. But his patriotism was superior 
to personal ambition ; and his powers as a statesman and orator, 
instead of being directed to the aggrandizement of the party with 
which he was affiliated, were devoted to the defense of the Con- 
stitution and the preservation of the Union. In 1830 he de- 
livered his celebrated second speech on Foote's resolution, gen- 
erally known as the " Reply to Hayne," in which he reached the 
culmination of his career as an orator. It was delivered in refu- 
tation of a speech by Mr. Hayne accusing the New-England 
States of attempting to aggrandize themselves at the expense of 
all the rest of the Union, and defending South Carolina in her 
proposed policy of nullification. Although Mr. Webster's fame 
extended in the years which followed, and he made many other 
speeches, he never again attained to so high a point as in that 
remarkable and memorable discourse. It was a speech for 
which, as he himself said, his whole life had been in a certain 



12 IXTRODi'CTIOX. 

sense a preparation. Of all the speeches ever made in Congress 
there has probably never been another that has been so widely 
read, or has had so great influence in the shaping of men's 
thoughts. In 1 84 1 Mr. Webster was appointed Secretary of 
State by President Hanison, and upon the death of the latter he 
was continued in office by President Tyler until after the com- 
pletion of the famous Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, in 
1842. He then returned to the practice of law in Boston ; but in 
1844 he was again appointed to the Senate, where he distin- 
guished himself by opposing the admission of Texas as a slave 
State, and strenuously combating the prosecution of the Mexican 
War. In 184S and again in 1852 he was a candidate before the 
national convention of Whigs for the nomination to the Presi- 
dency, but was defeated in the first case by General Taylor and 
in the second by General Scott. In 1850, led by a zealous desire 
to promote peace between the opposing political factions, he was 
induced to give his adhesion to Clay's " compromise measures," 
and on the 7th of March delivered his last great speech, — a 
speech in which he favored the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, and opposed the Wilmot Proviso for the exclusion of slav- 
ery from the new Territories thereafter acquired by the United 
States. This speech was a great disappointment to his friends, 
and lost him the support and confidence of the Whig party. In 
the latter part of the same year, however, he was appointed Sec- 
retary of State by President Fillmore. This position he held un- 
til May, 1852, when he resigned on account of ill health, and 
retired to his home at Marshfield, Mass., where he died on the 
24th of October in the same year. 

In the great influence which Mr. Webster, as a public speaker, 
wielded over the minds of his hearers, he was aided by his re- 



INTR OD UC TION. ' 1 3 

markable pliysical attributes. He possessed in a wonderful de- 
gree an indefinable personal magnetism which impressed every- 
one with a sense of his greatness. His face, his eyes, his voice, 
were such that whoever looked upon him and heard him speak, 
felt intuitively that he was a man of most extraordinary powers. 
Sydney Smith, when he saw him, exclaimed, '*' Good heavens! he 
is a small cathedral by himself ; " and Carlyle, writing of him, 
said, " He is a magnificent specimen. As a logic fencer or 
parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first 
sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion ; the 
amorphous crag-like face ; the dull black eyes under the precipice 
of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown ; 
the mastiff mouth accurately closed, — I have not traced so much 
of silent Berserker rage that I remember of in any man." 

Of the quality of Webster's oratory, the Hon. Rufus Choate 
says, " His multiform eloquence became at once so much acces- 
sion to permanent literature, in the strictest sense solid, attractive, 
and rich. Recall what pervaded all these forms of display, and 
everv effort in every form : that union of naked intellect, in its 
largest measure, which penetrates to the exact truth of the matter 
in hand by intuition or by inference, and discerns everything 
which may make it intelligible, probable, and credible to an- 
other, with an emotional and moral nature profound, passionate, 
and ready to kindle, and with imagination enough to supply a 
hundredfold more of illustration and aggrandizement than his 
taste suffered him to accept ; that union of greatness of soul with 
depth of heart which made his speaking almost more an exhibi- 
tion of character than of mere genius ; the style not merely pure, 
clear Saxon, but so constructed, so numerous as far as becomes 
prose, so forcible, so abounding in unlabored felicities, the words 



14 IXTRODUCTIOX. 

SO choice, the epithet so pictured, the matter absolute truth, or 
the most exact and spacious resemblance the human wit can de- 
vise ; the treatment of the subject, if you have regard to the kind 
of truth he had to handle, — pohtical, ethical, legal, — as deep 
as Paley's, or Locke's, or Butler's, . . . yet that depth and 
that completeness of sense made transparent as crystal waters, 
raised on winged language, vivified, fused, and poured along in 
a tide of emotion fervid, and incapable to be withstood." 

The history of Bunker Hill Monument and of the circum- 
stances attending the dehvery of Webster's famous orations — 
the one at the laying of its corner stone, the other at its comple- 
tion — may be briefly narrated. 

Gen. Joseph Warren, the hero of the battle of Bunker Hill, 
and the first prominent martyr of the Revolutionary War, was 
buried upon the hill on the day following the action, June i8, 
1775. Early in the following year the Massachusetts Lodge of 
Masons, of which he had been the presiding officer, applied to 
the Provisional Government of the Colony for permission to take 
up his remains, and inter them with the usual ceremonies and 
solemnities of the order. The request was granted, on condition 
that nothing should be done that would prevent the government 
from erecting at some future time a monument to his memory. 
This may be regarded as the first movement made towards com- 
memorating in any way the historic struggle on Bunker Hill ; and 
yet, although a funeral procession was formed, and a fitting eulogy 
on Gen. Warren was delivered, no measures were taken towards 
the building of a monument. 

On the 8lh of April, 1777, however, a resolution was adopted 
by the Continental Congress, directing that monuments should 
be erected to Gen. Warren in Boston and to Gen. Mercer at Fred- 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

ericksbiirg ; but no steps were ever taken towards the carrying 
out of this resolution. 

In 1794 the lodge of Masons at Charlestown decided to 
erect a monument to Gen. Warren at their own expense. Land 
for that purpose was donated to the lodge by the Hon. James 
Russell of Charlestown, and the monument was dedicated with 
appropriate ceremonies on the 2d of December of the same 
year. This monument was a wooden pillar, eighteen feet in 
height, raised on a pedestal eight feet square, at an elevation of 
ten feet from the ground. On the summit of the pillar was a 
gilt urn, and on the south side of the pedestal an appropriate 
inscription was engraved. 

It was not until still thirty years later that any decisive steps 
were taken towards the building of a monument which should 
comniemorate in a general way the battle of Bunker Hill, and 
should stand as the nation's expression of honor and gratitude to 
those who fell there in the defense of American liberty. In 1824 
an association was formed, under the leadership of AVilliam Tudor, 
Esq., to whose enthusiasm and perseverance the final success of 
the undertaking was largely due. After various private confer- 
ences among those who were most deeply interested in the proj- 
ect, it was decided to lay the corner stone of the monument on 
the 17th of June, 1825, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle ; and, 
in order to excite enthusiasm in favor of the work. Gen. La- 
fayette, at that time the nation's guest, was invited to be present, 
and participate in the ceremonies. Free transportation was of- 
fered to all surviving soldiers of the Revolution, and every effort 
was made to enlist a national interest in the patriotic occasion. 

"The celebration," says Mr. Frothingham, "was unequaled 
m magnificence by anything of the kind that had been seen in 



1 6 IXTRODUCTIOX. 

New England. The morning proved propitious. The air was 
cool, the sky was clear, and timely showers the previous day had 
brightened the vesture of Nature into its lovehest hue. Dehghted 
thousands flocked into Boston to bear a part in the proceedings, 
or to witness the spectacle. At about ten o'clock a procession 
moved from the State House towards Bunker Hill. The mihtary, 
in their fine uniforms, formed the van. About two hundred vet- 
erans of the Revolution, of whom forty were survivors of the 
battle, rode in barouches next to the escort. These venerable 
men, the relics of a past generation, with emaciated frames, tot- 
tering hmbs, and trembling voices, constituted a touching spec- 
tacle. Some wore, as honorable decorations, their old fighting 
equipments ; and some bore the scars of still more honorable 
wounds. Glistening eyes constituted their answer to the enthu- 
siastic cheers of the grateful multitudes who lined their pathway, 
and cheered their progress. To this patriot band succeeded the 
Bunker Hill Monument Association; then the Masonic frater- 
nity, in their splendid regalia, thousands in number; then La- 
fayette, continually welcomed by tokens of love and gratitude, 
and the invited guests ; then a long array of societies, with 
their various badges and banners. It was a splendid procession, 
and of such length that the front nearly reached Charlestown 
Bridge ere the rear had left Boston Common. It proceeded to 
Breed's Hill, where the Grand Master of the Freemasons, the 
President of the Monument Association, and Gen. Lafayette per- 
formed the ceremony of laying the corner stone in the presence 
of a vast concourse of people." The procession then moved 
to the northern declivity of the hill, where Mr. Webster delivered 
his oration to a large and appreciative audience. 

AVhen the corner stone of tlie Bunker Hill Monument was thus 



INTR ODCC riON: I 7 

laid in 1825, no definite plan for its construction had been de- 
cided upon. Among other designs for the proposed monument, 
one submitted by Solomon Willard, an architect of Boston, was 
finally adopted; and in 1827 the foundation was laid and the 
work of construction begun. The funds on hand, amounting 
to about $55,000, were soon exhausted, however, and in the fol- 
lowing year the work was temporarily abandoned. In 1834 a 
renewed effort was made, a considerable amount of money was 
raised by subscription, and the building of the great stone shaft 
was renewed. But the committee having the affair in charge 
soon found itself without further available means, and prog- 
ress was again suspended. In 1840 the ladies of Boston and 
the vicinity took hold of the enterprise. A fair was held in 
Faneuil Hall, to which every woman in the United States had 
been invited to contribute, and every effort was made to increase 
the hst of subscriptions. The result was, that a contract was 
soon afterwards entered' into with Mr. Savage of Boston, to fin- 
ish the monument for $43,000. The work was pushed forward 
with all reasonable dispatch, and the last stone was raised to the 
apex at six o'clock in the morning of July 23, 1842. 

The monument, which is in the form of an obelisk, is built of 
Quincy granite, is thirty feet in diameter at the base, and about 
fifteen feet at the top of the truncated part. It consists of ninety 
courses of stone, six of them below the ground, and eighty-four 
above. It was intended that it should be two hundred and 
twenty feet high ; but the precise height is two hundred and 
twenty-one feet. The observatory at the top is seventeen feet 
high, and eleven feet in diameter. The cap stone, or apex, is 
a single stone four feet square at the base, and three feet six 
inches in height, weighing two tons and a half. 
2 



l8 INTRODUCTION. 

It was arranged by the directors that the completion of the 
work should be celebrated on the 17th of the following June, the 
sixty-eighth anniversary of the battle; and Mr. Webster was 
invited to deliver the oration. " Many circumstances," says 
Edward Everett, " conspired to increase the interest of the occa- 
sion. . . . The President of the United States and his Cabinet 
had accepted invitations to be present ; delegations of the de- 
scendants of New England were present from the remotest parts 
of the Union ; one hundred and eight surviving veterans of the 
Revolution, among whom were some who were in the battle of 
Bunker Hill, imparted a touching interest to the scene. . . . Mr. 
Webster was stationed upon an elevated platform in front of 
the audience and of the monument towering in the background. 
According to Mr. Frothingham's estimate, a hundred thousand 
persons were gathered about the spot, and nearly half that num- 
ber are supposed to have been within the reach of the orator's 
voice. The ground rises slightly between the platform and the 
Monument Square, so that the whole of this immense concourse 

compactly crowded together, breathless with attention, swayed 

by one sentiment of admiration and delight — was within the full 
view of the speaker. The position and the occasion were the 
height of the moral sublime." 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER 

STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT AT 

CHARLESTOWN, MASS., ON THE I 7TH 

.OF JUNE, 1825. 



THIS uncounted multitude before me and around me proves 
the feeling which the occasion has excited. These thou- 
sands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from 
the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven 
in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, 
the place, and the purpose of our assembling, have made a deep 
impression on our hearts. 

If, indeed, there be anything in local association fit to affect 
the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions 
which agitate us here. We are among the sepulchers of our 
fathers. We are on ground distinguished by their valor, their 
constancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not 
to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice an 
obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never 
been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the 17th 
of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent 
history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we 
stand, a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. 
But we are Americans. We live in what may be called the " early 
age " of this great continent ; and we know that our posterity, 
through all time, are here to enjoy and suffer the allotments of 

19 



2 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

humanity. We see before us a probable train of great events ; 
we know that our own fortunes have been happily cast ; and it 
is natural, therefore, that we should be moved by the contempla- 
tion of occurrences which have guided our destiny before many 
of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should 
pass that portion of our existence which God allows to men on 
earth. 

We do not read even of the discovery of this continent with- 
out feeling something of a personal interest in the event, without 
being reminded how much it has affected our own fortunes and 
our own existence. It would be still more unnatural for us, there- 
fore, than for others, to contemplate with unaffected minds that 
interesting, I may say that most touching and pathetic scene, 
when the great discoverer of America stood on the deck of his 
shattered bark, the shades of night falling on the sea, yet no man 
sleeping ; tossed on the billows of an unknown ocean, yet the 
stronger billows of alternate hope and despair tossing his own 
troubled thoughts ; extending forward his harassed frame, strain- 
ing westward his anxious and eager eyes, till Heaven at last 
granted him a moment of rapture and ecstasy, in blessing his 
vision with the sight of the unknown world. 

Nearer to our times, more closely connected with our fates, 
and therefore still more interesting to our feelings and affections, 
is the settlement of our own country by colonists from England. 
We cherish every memorial of these worthy ancestors ; we cele- 
brate their patience and fortitude ; we admire their daring enter- 
prise ; we teach our children to venerate their piety ; and we are 
justly proud of being descended from men who have set the 
world an example of founding civil institutions on the great and 
united principles of human freedom and human knowledge. To 
us their chiklren, the story of their labors and sufferings can 
never be without its interest. We shall not stand unmoved on 
the shores of Plymouth while the sea continues to wash it; nor 
will our brethren in another early and ancient Colony forget the 
place of its first establishment, till their river shall cease to flow 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 21 

by itJ No vigor of j-oiith, no maturity of manhood, will lead 
the nation to forget the spots where its infancy was cradled and 
defended. 

But the great event in the history of the continent, which we 
are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern 
times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the 
American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and 
happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are 
brought together in this place by our love of country, by our 
admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal ser- 
vices and patriotic devotion. 

The Society whose organ I am 2 was formed for the purpose 
of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory 
of the early friends of American independence. They have 
thought that for this object no time could be more propitious 
than the present prosperous and peaceful period, that no place 
could claim preference over this memorable spot, and that no 
day could be more auspicious to the undertaking than the anni- 
versary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of 
that monument we have now laid. With solemnities^ suited to 
the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and 
in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begim the work. 

1 As nearly every one of the Colonies was founded on the bank of a river, 
it is not clear which is alluded to here. Edward Everett, whose edition of 
the orations appeared while Webster was still living, mentions the settlement 
of the Maryland Colony on the St. Mary's River. "The 'Ark' and the 
* Dove,' " he says, " are remembered with scarcely less interest by the de- 
scendants of the sister Colony than is the ' Mayflower ' in New England, 
which thirteen years earlier, at the same season of the year, bore thither the 
Pilgrim Fathers." 

2 Mr. Webster was at that time president of the Bunker Hill Monument 
Association, having been appointed to that position as the successor of Gov. 
John Brooks, the first president. 

3 Besides the laying of the corner stone with Masonic ceremonies, there 
was prayer by the Rev. Joseph Thaxter, and an ode wa.s read by the Rev. 
John Pierpont of Boston. 



2 2 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad 
foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned 
grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the works 
of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of 
which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it. 
We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most 
safely deposited in the universal remembrance of mankind. We 
know that if we could cause this structure to ascend, not only 
till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, its broad surfaces 
could still contain but part of that which, in an age of knowl- 
edge, hath already been spread over the earth, and which history 
charges itself with making known to all future times. We know 
that no inscription on entablatures less broad than the earth it- 
self can carry information of the events we commemorate where 
it has not already gone ; and that no structure which shall not 
outlive the duration of letters and knowledge among men can 
prolong the memorial. But our object is, by this edifice, to show 
our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achieve- 
ments of our ancestors, and, by presenting this work of gratitude 
to the eye, to keep ahve similar sentiments, and to foster a con- 
stant regard for the principles of the Revolution. Human be- 
ings are composed not of reason only, but of imagination also, 
and sentiment ; and that is neither wasted nor misapphed which 
is appropriated to the purpose of giving right direction to senti- 
ments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the heart. Let 
it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hos- 
tility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, 
purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national 
independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest 
upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of 
that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own 
land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by 
the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We cotne, 
as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us 
and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time. 



THE BUXKER HILL MONUMENT. 23 

shall turn his eye hither may behold that the place is not undis- 
tinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was 
fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magni- 
tude and importance of that event to every class and every age. 
We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from 
maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, 
and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish 
that labor may look up here, and be proud in the midst of its 
toil. We wish that in those days of disaster, which, as they 
come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, 
desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be as- 
sured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. 
We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the 
pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contrib- 
ute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence 
and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight 
of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his 
who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the 
liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise till 
it meet the sun in his coming ; let the earliest light of the morn- 
ing gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. 

We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and 
so important that they might crowd and distinguish centuries, 
are in our times compressed within the compass of a single life. 
When has it happened that history has had so much to record, 
in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775 ? 
Our own Revolution, which, under other circumstances, might 
itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, 
has been achieved, twenty-four sovereign and independent States 
erected, and a general government established over them, so safe, 
so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its estab- 
lishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not far 
the greater wonder that it should have been established at all. 
Two or three millions of people have been augmented to twelve, 



24 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of suc- 
cessful industry, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and 
the Mississippi become the fellow citizens and neighbors of those 
who cultivate the hills of New England. i We have a commerce 
that leaves no sea unexplored, navies which take no law from 
superior force, revenues adequate to all the exigencies of gov- 
ernment, almost without taxation, and peace with all nations, 
founded on equal rights and mutual respect. 

Europe, within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty 
revolution 2 which, while it has been felt in the individual condi- 
tion and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the cen- 
ter her political fabric, and dashed against one another thrones 
which had stood tranquil for ages. On this our continent, our 
own example has been followed, and colonies have sprung up to 
be nations. Unaccustomed sounds of liberty and free govern- 
ment have reached us from beyond the track of the sun ; ^ and at 
this moment the dominion of European power in this continent,* 
from the place where we stand to the south pole, is annihilated 
forever. 

In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been 
the general progress of knowledge, such the improvement in leg- 
islation, in commerce, in the arts, in letters, and, above all, in 
liberal ideas and the general spirit of the age, that the whole 
world seems changed. 

^ This has been more than realized by the introduction of railroads, mak- 
ing the people even of the Pacific coast neighbors of the people of New Eng- 
land. Edward Everett mentions as an interesting circumstance, the fact that 
the first railroad on the Western continent was built for the purpose of aiding 
in the erection of this monument. It was a horse railroad from Quincy to 
Boston, and was used for transporting the blocks of granite from the quarries. 

^ The French Revolution and the wars resulting from it. 

3 The allusion is to the then recent establishment of republican govern- 
ments in South America. 

•♦ The Monroe Doctrine, enunciated by President Monroe in his message 
to Congress in 1823, >vas virtually a declaration that no European power 
should be permitted to secure further dominion on the American continent. 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 25 

Yet, notwithstanding that this is but a faint abstract of the 
things which have happened since the day of the battle of 
Bunker Hill, we are but fifty years removed from it ; and we 
now stand here to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition, 
and to look abroad on the brightened prospects of the world, 
while we still have among us some of those who were active 
agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here, from every 
quarter of New England,^ to visit once more, and under circum- 
stances so affecting, — I had almost said so overwhelming, — this 
renowned theater of their courage and patriotism. 

Venerable men, you have come down to us from a former 
generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your liVes, 
that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you 
stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your 
neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. 
Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your 
heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet : but all else how 
changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no 
mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charles- 
town. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the 
impetuous charge ; the steady and successful repulse ; the loud 
call to repeated assault ; the summoning of all that is manly to 
repeated resistance ; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared 
in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, 

— all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All 
is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis,'^ its towers and roofs, 

— which you then saw filled with wives and children and country- 
men in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions 
for the issue of the combat, — have presented you to-day with the 
sight of its whole happy population come out to welcome and 
greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a 

1 There were nearly two hundred of them, forty of whom had been in the 
battle of Bunker Hill. 

2 Boston. 



2 6 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount,^ 
and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoy- 
ance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and 
defense. All is peace ; and God has granted 3'ou this sight of 
your country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave. He has 
allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your pa- 
triotic toils ; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, 
to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in 
the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you. 

But, alas ! you are not all here. Time and the sword have 
thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, 
Pomeroy, Bridge, — our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken 
band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your 
country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright exam- 
ple. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the 
common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know 
that your work had been nobly and successfully accompHshed. 
You lived to see your country's independence established, and 
to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you 
saw arise the light of Peace, like 

'' Another morn, 
Risen on raid noon ; " 2 

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. 

But ah! him, the first great martyr^ in tliis great cause; 
him, the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart ; 
him, the head of our ci\il councils and the destined leader of 
our military bands, whom nothing brought hither but the un- 
quenchable fire of his own spirit ; him, cut off by Providence 

• 

1 The United States Navy Yard at Charlestown is situated at the base of 
Bunker Hill. 

2 Paradise Lost, v. 310. 

^ Gen. Joseph Warren, born in 1 741, was a man of fine culture and 
unusual promise. He liad been elected president of the Provincial Congress, 
and was one of the most ardent jiatriots of the time. 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 27 

in the hour of overwhehning anxiety and thick gloom, falhng 
ere he saw the star of his country rise, pouring out his generous 
blood hke water before he knew whether it would fertilize a land 
of freedom or of bondage, — how shall I struggle with the emo- 
tions that stifle the utterance of thy name ! Our poor work 
may perish ; but thine shall endure. This monument may 
molder away ; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to 
a level with the sea : but thy memory shall not fail. Whereso- 
ever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the trans- 
ports of patriotism and hberty, its aspirations shall be to claim 
kindred with thy spirit. 

But the scene amidst which we stand does not permit us to 
confine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fearless spirits 
who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We 
have the happiness to rejoice here in the presence of a most 
worthy representation of the survivors of the whole Revolutionary 
army. 

Veterans, you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. 
You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, 
from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans 
OF HALF A CENTURY, wlicu in your youthful days you put every- 
thing at hazard in your country's cause, — good as that cause was, 
and sanguine as youth is, — still your fondest hopes did not stretch 
onward to an hour like this. At a period to which you could 
not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national 
prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now 
met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive 
the overflowings of a universal gratitude. 

But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts in- 
form me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that 
a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images 
of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, present them- 
selves before you. The scene overwhelms you, and 1 turn from 
it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your decHning 
years, and bless them ! And when you shall here have ex- 



2 8 DANIEL WEBSTER, 

changed your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed 
the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in 
adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory, then look abroad 
upon this lovely land which your young valor defended, and 
mark the happiness with which it is filled ; yea, look abroad upon 
the v/hole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to 
give to your country, and what a praise you have added to free- 
dom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam 
upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind ! 

The occasion does not require of me any particular account of 
the battle of the 17th of June, 1775, nor any detailed narrative 
of the events which immediately preceded it. These are famil- 
iarly known to all. In the progress of the great and interesting 
controversy, Massachusetts and the town of Boston had become 
early and marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parlia- 
ment. This had been manifested in the act for altering the gov- 
ernment of the Province, and in that for shutting up the port of 
Boston. 1 Nothing sheds more honor on our early history, and 
nothing better shows how little the feelings and sentiments of the 
Colonies were known or regarded in England, than the impres- 
sion which these measures everywhere produced in America. It 
had been anticipated that, while the Colonies in general would 
be terrified by the severity of the punishment inflicted on Mas- 
sachusetts, the other seaports would be governed by a mere spirit 
of gain ; and that, as Boston was now cut off from all commerce, 
the unexpected advantage which this blow on her was calculated 
to confer on other towns would be greedily enjoyed. How mis- 
erably such reasoners deceived themselves ! How little they 
knew of the depth and the strength and the intenseness of that 
feeling of resistance to illegal acts of power which possessed the 
whole American peojile ! Everywhere the unworthy boon was 

1 The Boston Port Bill, passed by the British Parliament in 1774, declared 
that port to be closed, and transferred the seat of colonial government to 
Salem. 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 29 

rejected with scorn. The fortunate occasion was seized every- 
where, to show to the whole world that the Colonies were swayed 
by no local interest, no partial interest, no selfish interest. The 
temptation to profit by the punishment of Boston was strongest 
to our neighbors of Salem. Yet Salem was precisely the place 
where this miserable proffer was spurned in a tone of the most 
lofty self-respect and the most indignant patriotism. '* We are 
deeply affected," said its inhabitants, " with the sense of our pub- 
lic calamities ; but the miseries that are now rapidly hastening 
on our brethren in the capital of the Province greatly excite our 
commiseration. By shutting up the port of Boston, some imagine 
that the course of trade might be turned hither and to our bene- 
fit ; but we must be dead to every idea of justice, lost to all feel- 
ings of humanity, could we indulge a thought to seize on wealth, 
and raise our fortunes, on the ruin of our suffering neighbors." 
These noble sentiments were not confined to our immediate vi- 
cinity. In that day of general affection and brotherhood, the 
blow given to Boston smote on every patriotic heart from one 
end of the country to the other. Virginia and the Carolinas, as 
well as Connecticut and New Hampshire, felt and proclaimed 
the cause to be their own. The Continental Congress, then 
holding its first session in Philadelphia, expressed its sympathy 
for the suffering inhabitants of Boston ; and addresses were 
received from all quarters assuring them that the cause was a 
common one, and should be met by common efforts and com- 
mon sacrifices. The Congress of Massachusetts responded to 
these assurances ; and in an address to the Congress at Philadel- 
phia, bearing the official signature (perhaps among the last) of 
the immortal Warren, notwithstanding the severity of its suffer- 
ing and the magnitude of the dangers which threatened it, it was 
declared that this Colony " is ready at all times to spend and to 
be spentin the cause of America." 

But the hour drew nigh which was to put professions to the 
proof, and to determine whether the authors of these mutual 
pledges were ready to seal them in blood. The tidings of Lex- 



o 



o . DANIEL WEBSTER. 



ington and Concord had no sooner spread than it was univer- 
sally felt that the time was at last come for action. A spirit per- 
vaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but deep, solemn, 
determined, 

" Totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpora miscet. " ^ 

War on their own soil and at their own doors was, indeed, a 
strange work to the yeomanry of New England ; but their con- 
sciences were convinced of its necessity, their country called them 
to it, and they did not withhold themselves from the perilous trial. 
The ordinary occupations of life were abandoned ; the plow was 
stayed in the unfinished furrow ; wives gave up their husbands, 
and mothers gave up their sons, to the battles of a civil war. 
Death might come, in honor, on the field ; it might come, in 
disgrace, on the scaffold : for either and for both they were pre- 
pared. The sentiment of Quincy^ was full in their hearts. 
" Blandishments," said that distinguished son of genius and pa- 
triotism, *' will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intim- 
idate ; for, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, 
whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, 
we will die free men." 

The 17th of June saw the four New-England Colonies ^ stand- 
ing here side by side to triumph or to fall together ; and there 
was with them, from that moment to the end of the war, what I 
hope will remain with them forever, one cause, one country, one 
heart. 

The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the most impor- 

1 ^^neid, Lib. VI. 725, William ^Morris's translation : — 

" One soul is shed through all, 
That quickeneth all the mass, and with the mighty thing is blent." 

2 Josiah Quincy, Jr. (born in 1744; died at sea, 1775), was one of the 
most energetic opponents of British usurpation, and with Warren and James 
Otis exerted an early and very great influence in favor of the freedom of the 
American Colonies. 

3 Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rl:ode Island, Connecticut. 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 31 

tant effects beyond its immediate results as a military engage- 
ment. It created at once a state of open, public war. There 
could now be no longer a question of proceeding against indi- 
viduals as guilty of treason or rebellion. That fearful crisis was 
past. The appeal lay to the sword ; and the only question was, 
whether the spirit and the resources of the people would hold 
out till the object should be accomplished. Nor were its gen- 
eral consequences confined to our own country. The previous 
proceedings of the Colonies, their appeals, resolutions, and ad- 
dresses, had made their cause known to Europe. Without boast- 
ing, we may say that in no age or country has the public cause 
been maintained with more force of argument, more power of 
illustration, or more of that persuasion which excited feeling and 
elevated principle can alone bestow, than the Revolutionary state 
papers exhibit. These papers will forever deserve to be studied, 
not only for the spirit which they breathe, but for the ability with 
which they were written. 

To this able vindication of their cause, the Colonies had now 
added a practical and severe proof of their own true devotion to 
it, and given evidence also of the power which they could bring 
to its support. All now saw that, if America fell, she would not 
fall without a struggle. Men felt sympathy and regard, as well 
as surprise, when they beheld these infant states, remote, un- 
known, unaided, encounter the power of England, and, in the 
first considerable battle, leave more of their enemies dead on the 
field, in proportion to the number of combatants,^ than had been 
recently known to fall in the wars of Europe. 

Information of these events, circulating throughout the world, 
at length reached the ears of one who now hears me.- He has 

1 There were engaged in the battle about 1 , 500 Americans and 2, 500 British. 
The losses of the Americans were 115 killed, 305 wounded, 30 captured : total 
450. The British lost 206 killed, 828 wounded: total 1,054. 

2 " Among the earliest of tlie arrangements for the celebration of the 17th 
of June, 1825, was the invitation to Gen. Lafayette to be present; and he 
had so timed his progress through the other States as to return to Massachu- 
setts in season for the great occasion." — Everett. 



32 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

not forgotten the emotion which the fame of Bunker Hill and 
the name of Warren excited in his youthful breast. 

Sir, we are assembled to commemorate the establishment of 
great public principles of liberty, and to do honor to the distin- 
guished dead. The occasion is too severe for eulogy of the hv- 
ing. But, sir, your interesting relation to this country, the pecul- 
iar circumstances which surround you and surround us, call on 
me to express the happiness which we deriv^e from your presence 
and aid in this solemn commemoration. 

Fortunate, fortunate man ! — with what measure of devotion 
will you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordi- 
nary Hfe ! You are connected with both hemispheres and with 
two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric 
spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the 
New World to the Old ; and we who are now here to perform 
this duty of patriotism have all of us long ago received it in 
charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. 
You will account it an instance of your good fortune, sir, that 
you crossed the seas to visit us at a time which enables you to be 
present at this solemnity.^ You now behold the field the renown 
of which reached you in the heart of France, and caused a thrill 
in your ardent bosom. You see the lines of the little redoubt 
thrown up by the incredible diligence of Pfescott, defended to 
the last extremity by his lion-hearted valor, and within which 
the corner stone of our monument has now taken its position. 
You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, Mc- 
Cleary, Moore, and other early patriots fell with him. Those 
who survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to 
the present hour, are now around you. Some of them you have 
known in the trying scenes of the war. Behold ! they now 

1 Gen. Lafayette made a tour of the United States as the "nation's 
guest " in 1824-25. His name stood at the head of tlie subscriptions foF 
the Bunker Hill Monument; and he wrote, " In all my travels through the 
country, I have made Bunlvcr Hill my jiolestar." 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. ^iZ 

stretch forth their feeble arms to embrace you. Behold ! they 
raise their trembling voices to invoke the blessing of God on you 
and yours forever. 

Sir, you have assisted us in laying the foundation of this struc- 
ture. You have heard us rehearse, with our feeble commenda- 
tion, the names of departed patriots. Monuments and eulogy 
belong to the dead.i We give them this day to Warren and his 
associates. On other occasions they have been given to your 
more immediate companions in arms, to Washington, to Greene, 
to Gates, to Sullivan, and to Lincoln. We have become reluc- 
tant to grant these, our highest and last honors, further. We 
would gladly hold them yet back from the little remnant of that 
immortal band. Scms in co^ltun redeas!^ Illustrious as are your 
merits, yet far, oh, very far distant be the day ^ when any inscrip- 
tion shall bear your name, or any tongue pronounce its eulogy ! 

The leading reflection to which this occasion seems to invite 
us respects the great changes which have happened in the fifty 
years since the battle of Bunker Hill was fought. And it pecul- 
iarly marks the character of the present age, that, in looking at 
these changes and in estimating their effect on our condition, we 
are obliged to consider, not what has been done in our own country 
only, but in others also. In these interesting times, while nations 
are making separate and individual advances in improvement, 
they make, too, a common progress, like vessels on a common 
tide, propelled by the gales at different rates, according to their 
several structure and management, but all moved forward by one 
mighty current, strong enough to bear onward whatever does not 
sink beneath it. 

1 " The thrilling eloquence of the address to the old soldiers of Bunker 
Hill, and of the apostrophe to Warren, and the superb reservation of eulogy 
with which he spoke of and to Gen. Lafayette, were perhaps unequalcd, 
surely never surpassed, by Webster on any other occasion." — TiCKNOR: 
Life of Webster, ii. p. 252. 

2 " Late into heaven may you return." — Horace, I. ii. 45. 
•^ Lafayette died May 20, 1834. 

3 



34 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opin- 
ions and knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing in 
a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has in our time 
triumphed, and is triumphing, over distance, over difference of 
languages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and over 
bigotry. The civihzed and Christian world is fast learning the 
great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary 
hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world 
is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of 
mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in 
any tongue, and the world will hear it. A great chord of senti- 
ment and feehng runs through two continents, and vibrates over 
both. Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country ; 
every wave rolls it ; all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. 
There is a vast commerce of ideas ; there are marts and ex- 
changes for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship 
of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and 
opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things ; hu- 
man thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately 
answered ; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the 
last half century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously 
gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow workers 
on the theater of intellectual operation. 

From these causes, important improvements have taken place 
in the personal condition of individuals. Generally speaking, 
mankind are not only better fed and better clothed, but they are 
able also to enjoy more leisure ; they possess more refinement 
and more self-respect. A superior tone of education, manners, 
and habite., prevails. This remark, most true in its application to 
our own country, is also partly true when applied elsewhere. It 
is proved by the vastly augmented consumption of those articles 
of manufacture and of commerce which contribute to the com- 
forts and the decencies of life, — an augmentation which has far 
outrun the progress of population. And while the unexampled 
and almost incredible use of machinery would seem to supply the 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 35 

place of labor, labor still finds its occupation and its reward, so 
wisely has Providence adjusted men's wants and desires to their 
condition and their capacity. 

Any adequate survey, however, of the progress made during 
the last half century in the polite and the mechanic arts, in ma- 
chinery and manufactures, in commerce and agriculture, in letters 
and in science, would require volumes. I must abstain wholly 
from these subjects, and turn for a moment to the contemplation 
of what has been done on the great question of politics and gov- 
ernment. This is the master topic of the age, and during the 
whole fifty years it has intensely occupied the thoughts of men. 
The nature of civil government, its ends and uses, have been 
canvassed and investigated, ancient opinions attacked and de- 
fended, new ideas recommended and resisted, by whatever power 
the mind of man could bring to the controversy. From the closet 
and the pubhc halls, the debate has been transferred to the field ; 
and the world has been shaken by wars of unexampled magni- 
tude and the greatest variety of fortune. A day of peace has 
at length succeeded ; and, now that the strife has subsided and 
the smoke cleared away, we may begin to see what has actually 
been done permanently changing the state and condition of hu- 
man societv. And, without dwelling on particular circumstances, 
it is most apparent, that, from the before-mentioned causes of 
augmented knowledge and improved individual condition, a real, 
substantial, and important change has taken place, and is taking 
place, highly favorable, on the whole, to human liberty and 
human happiness. 

The great wheel of political revolution began to move in Ameri- 
ca. Here its rotation was guarded, regular, and safe. Transferred 
to the other continent, from unfortunate but natural causes, it 
received an irregular and violent impulse ; it whirled along with a 
fearful celerity, till at length, like the chariot wheels in the races 
of antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its own motion, and 
blazed onward, spreading conflagration and terror around.^ 

1 Alluding to the French Revolution (1793) and the Reign of Terror. 



36 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

We learn from the result of this experiment how fortunate was 
our own condition, and how admirably the character of our 
people was calculated for setting the great example of popular 
governments. The possession of power did not turn the heads 
of the American people, for they had long been in the habit of 
exercising a great degree of self-control. Although the para- 
mount authority of the parent state existed over them, yet a large 
field of legislation had always been open to our colonial assemblies. 
They were accustomed to representative bodies and the forms of 
free government ; they understood the doctrine of the division of 
power among different branches, and the necessity of checks on 
each. The character of our countrymen, moreover, was sober, 
moral, and rehgious, and there was little in the change to shock 
their feelings of justice and humanity, or even to disturb an hon- 
est prejudice. We had no domestic throne to overturn, no privi- 
leged orders to cast down, no violent changes of property to en- 
counter. In the American Revolution, no man sought or wished 
for more than to defend and enjoy his own. None hoped for 
plunder or for spoil. Rapacity was unknown to it ; the ax was 
not among the instruments of its accomplishment ; and we all 
know that it could not have Hved a single day under any well- 
founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse to the 
Christian religion. 

It need not surprise us, that, under circumstances less auspi- 
cious, political revolutions elsewhere, even when well intended, 
have terminated differently. It is, indeed, a great achievement, 
it is the master work of the world, to establish governments en- 
tirely popular on lasting foundations ; nor is it easy, indeed, to 
introduce the popular principle at all into governments to which 
it has been altogether a stranger. It cannot be doubted, how- 
ever, that luiropc has come out of the contest, in which she has 
been so long engaged, with greatly superior knowledge, and, in 
many respects, in a highly improved condition. Whatever bene- 
fit has been acquired is likely to be retained, for it consists mainly 
in the acquisition of more enlightened ideas. And although king- 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMEXT. 37 

doms and provinces may be wrested from the hands that hold 
them, in the same manner they were obtained ; although ordi- 
nary and vulgar power may, in human affairs, be lost as it has 
been won ; yet it is the glorious prerogative of the empire of 
knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, 
it increases by the multiple of its own power ; all its ends become 
means ; all its attainments, helps to new conquests. Its whole 
abundant harvest is but so much seed wheat, and nothing has 
hmited, and nothing can hmit, the amount of ultimate product. 

Under the influence of this rapidly increasing knowledge, the 
people have begun, in all forms of government, to think and to 
reason on affairs of state. Regarding government as an institu- 
tion for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its opera- 
tions and a participation in its exercise. A call for the repre- 
.sentative system wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is 
already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly 
made. Where men may speak out, they demand it ; where the 
bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it. 

When Louis XIV.i said, " I am the state," he expressed 
the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules 
of that system, the people are disconnected from the state : 
they are its subjects ; it is their lord. These ideas, founded in 
the love of power, and long supported by the excess and the 
abuse of it, are yielding, in our age, to other opinions ; and the 
civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction 
of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of gov- 
ernment are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exer- 
cised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is 
more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and 
more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the fir- 
mament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. The 
prayer of the Grecian champion when enveloped in unnatural 
clouds and darkness is the appropriate political supplication for 
the people of every country not yet blessed with free institutions : 

1 Louis XIV., King of France, 1643-1715. 



38 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

*' Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore, 
Give me TO SEE, — and Ajax asks no more." i 

We may hope that the growing influence of enlightened senti- 
ment will promote the permanent peace of the world. Wars to 
maintain family alhances, to uphold or to cast down dynasties, 
and to regulate successions to thrones, which have occupied so 
much room in the history of modern times, if not less likely to 
happen at all, will be less likely to become general and involve 
many nations, as the great principle shall be more and more 
established, that the interest of the world is peace, and its first 
great statute, that every nation possesses the power of establish- 
ing a government for itself. But public opinion has attained, 
also, an influence over governments which do not admit the popu- 
lar principle into their organization. A necessary respect for the 
judgment of the world operates, in some measure, as a control 
over the most unlimited forms of authority. It is owing, per- 
haps, to this truth, that the interesting struggle of the Greeks ^ 
has been suffered to go on so long without a direct interference, 
either to wrest that country from its present masters, or to execute 
the system of pacification by force, and with united strength lay 
the neck of Christian and civilized Greek at the foot of the bar- 
barian Turk. Let us thank God that we live in an age when 
something has influence besides the bayonet, and when the stern- 
est authority does not venture to encounter the scorching power 
of public reproach. Any attempt of the kind I have mentioned 
should be met by one universal burst of indignation ; the air of 
the civilized world ought to be made too warm to be comfortably 
breathed by any one who would hazard it. 

It is, indeed, a touching reflection, that while, in the fullness of 
our country's happiness, we rear this monument to her honor, we 

1 Iliad, XVII. 729, Pope's translation. 

2 The Greek Revolution, against Turkish oppression and for the freedom 
of Greece, was then in progress. It had begun in 1820, and was terminated, 
with the success of the patriots, in 1829. 



THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 39 

look for instruction in our undertaking to a country which is now 
in fearful contest, not for works of art or memorials of glory, but 
for her own existence. Let her be assured that she is not for- 
gotten in the world, that her efforts are applauded, and that 
constant prayers ascend for her success. And let us cherish a 
confident hope for her final triumph. If the true spark of reU- 
gious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency 
cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be 
smothered for a time ; the ocean may overwhelm it ; mountains 
may press it down ; but its inherent and unconquerable force will 
heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in 
some place or other, the volcano will break out, and flame up to 
heaven. 

Among the great events of the half century we must reckon, 
certainly, the revolution of South America ; ^ and we are not 
likely to overrate the importance of that revolution, either to the 
people of the country itself or to the rest of the world. The late 
Spanish colonies, now independent states, under circumstances 
less favorable, doubtless, than attended our own Revolution, have 
yet successfully commenced their national existence. They have 
accomplished the great object of establishing their independence ; 
they are known and acknowledged in the world : and although in 
regard to their systems of government, their sentiments on reli- 
gious toleration, and their provisions for public instruction, they 
may have yet much to learn, it must be admitted that they have 
risen to the condition of settled and established states more rap- 
idly than could have been reasonably anticipated. They already 
furnish an exhilarating example of the difference between free 
governments and despotic misrule. Their commerce, at this 
moment, creates a new activity in all the great marts of the 
world. They show themselves able, by an exchange of com- 
modities, to bear a useful part in the intercourse of nations. 

1 The revolution of the South American colonies was at that time an event 
of but recent occurrence. It began in i8io, and ended in 1824, when Bohvia, 
the last of the Spanish colonies, was acknowledged independent. 



40 DAXIEL WEBSTER. 

A new spirit of enterprise and industry begins to prevail ; all 
tlie great interests of society receive a salutary impulse ; and the 
progress of information not only testifies to an improved condi- 
tion, but itself constitutes the highest and most essential improve- 
ment. 

When the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the existence of 
South America was scarcely felt in the civilized world. The 
thirteen little Colonies of North America habitually called them- 
selves the " Continent." Borne down by colonial subjugation, 
monopoly, and bigotry, these vast regions of the South were 
hardly visible above the horizon. But in our day there has 
been, as it were, a new creation. The southern hemisphere 
emerges from the sea. Its lofty mountains begin to lift them- 
selves into the hght of heaven ; its broad and fertile plains stretch 
out in beauty to the eye of civilized man ; and at the mighty 
bidding of the voice of pohtical liberty the waters of darkness 
retire. 

And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction 
of the benefit which the example of our country has produced, 
and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human happi- 
ness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude, and 
to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the great 
drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of the sys- 
tem of representative and popular governments. Thus far our 
example shows that such governments are compatible, not only 
with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace, with 
security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just adminis- 
tration. 

We are not propagandists, ^^'herever other systems are pre- 
ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as better 
suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be en- 
joyed. Our history Iiitherto proves, however, that the popular 
form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men 
may govern themselves ; and the duty incumbent on us is to 



riTE nUXKER HILL MONUMENT, 41 

preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take care 
that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If, in 
our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular gov- 
ernments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of 
circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be 
expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest 
with us ; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had 
become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular 
liberty would be sounded throughout the earth. 

These are excitements to duty, but they are not suggestions 
of doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before 
us, and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief that popular 
governments, though subject to occasional variations, in form 
perhaps not always for the better, may yet, in their general 
character, be as durable and permanent as other systems. We 
know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible. The 
prijiciple of free governments adheres to the American soil. It 
is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains. 

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this 
generation and on us sink deep into our hearts. Those who 
established our liberty and our government are daily dropping 
from among us. The great trust now descends to new hands. 
Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our 
appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for inde- 
pendence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. 
Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon 1 and Alfred ^ 
and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. 
But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preserva- 
tion ; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit to which 
the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business 

1 Solon, the most famous of the lawgivers of ancient Greece (born about 
638 B.C.), established a new code of laws for Athens. 

2 King Alfred the Great, of England (849-901), reduced the Anglo-Saxon 
laws to a system, and made great improvements in the administration of jus- 
tice. He is sometimes regarded as the founder of the Englisli monarchy. 



42 DANIEL IVEBSTER. 

is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In 
a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works 
of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its 
powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, 
and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not per- 
form something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a 
true-spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects 
which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled 
conviction and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States 
are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle 
of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the 
vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our 

COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUN- 
TRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself 
become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and 
terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which 
the world may gaze with admiration forever ! 



THE COMPLETION OF THE BUNKER 
HILL MONUMENT. 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED ON BUNKER HILL, ON THE 17TH OF 
JUNE, 1843, ON THE OCCASION OF THE COMPLETION 

OF THE MONUMENT. 



A DUTY has been performed. A work of gratitude and patri- 
otism is completed. This structure, having its foundations 
in soil which drank deep of early Revolutionary blood, has at 
length reached its destined height, and now lifts its summit to the 
skies. 

We have assembled to celebrate the accomplishment of this 
undertaking, and to indulge afresh in the recollection of the great 
event which it is designed to commemorate. Eighteen years, 
more than half the ordinary duration of a generation of man- 
kind, have elapsed since the corner stone of this monument was 
laid. The hopes of its projectors rested on voluntary contribu- 
tions, private munificence, and the general favor of the public. 
These hopes have not been disappointed. Donations have been 
made by individuals, in some cases of large amount ; and smaller 
sums have been contributed by thousands. All who regard the 
object itself as important, and its accomplishment, therefore, as 
a good attained, will entertain sincere respect and gratitude for 
the unwearied efforts of the successive presidents, boards of 
directors, and committees of the Association which has had the 
general control of the work. The architect, equally entitled to 

43 



44 DAXIKL U'EBSTER. 

our thanks and commendation, will find other reward, also, for 
his labor and skill, in the beauty and elegance of the obelisk 
itself, and the distinction which, as a work of art, it confers upon 
him. 

At a period when the prospects of further progress in the 
undertaking were gloomy and discouraging, the Mechanic Asso- 
ciation, by a most praiseworthy and vigorous effort, raised new 
funds for carrying it forward, and saw them applied with fidelity, 
economy, and skill. It is a grateful duty to make public acknowl- 
edgments of such timely and efficient aid. 

The last effort and the last contribution were from a different 
source. Garlands of grace and elegance were destined to crown 
a work which had its commencement in manly patriotism. The 
winning power of the sex addressed itself to the public, and all 
that was needed to carry the monument to its proposed height, 
and to give to it its finish, was promptly supplied. The mothers 
and the daughters of the land contributed thus, most successfully, 
to whatever there is of beauty in the monument itself, or what- 
ever of utility and pubhc benefit and gratification there is in its 
completion. 

Of those with whom the plan originated, of erecting on this 
spot a monument worthy of the event to be commemorated, 
many are now present ; but others, alas ! have themselves be- 
come subjects of monumental inscription. William Tudor — an 
accomplished scholar, a distinguished writer, a most amiable 
man, allied both by birth and sentiment to the patriots of the 
Revolution — died while on public service abroad, and now lies 
buried in a foreign land.^ William Sullivan — a name fragrant of 
Revolutionary merit and of public service and public virtue, who 
liimself partook in a high degree of the respect and confidence 
of the community, and yet was always most loved where best 
known — has also been gathered to his fathers. And last, George 
Blake — a lawyer of learning and eloquence, a man of wit and of 

1 William Tudor died at Ri(^ de Janeiro, while Charge d'' Affaires oi \\\q. 
United States, in 1830, See Introduction. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 45 

talent, of social qualities the most agreeable and fascinating, and 
of gifts which enabled him to exercise large sway over public 
assemblies — has closed his human career. ^ I know that in the 
crowds before me there are those from whose eyes tears will 
flow at the mention of these names. But such mention is due 
to their general character, their public and private virtues, and 
especially, on this occasion, to the spirit and zeal with which 
they entered into the undertaking which is now completed. 

I have spoken only of those who are no longer numbered with 
the living. But a long life, now drawing towards its close, al- 
ways distinguished by acts of public spirit, humanity, and charity, 
forming a character which has already become historical, and 
sanctified by public regard and the affection of friends, may 
confer even on the living the proper immunity of the dead, and 
be the fit subject of honorable mention and warm commendation. 
Of the early projectors of the design of this monument, one of 
the most prominent, the most zealous, and the most efficient, is 
Thomas H, Perkins.- It was beneath his ever hospitable roof 
that those whom I have mentioned, and others yet living and 
now present, having assembled for the purpose, adopted the first 
step towards erecting a monument on Bunker Hill. Long may 
he remain, with unimpaired faculties, in the wide field of his 
usefulness ! His charities have distilled hke the dews of heaven ; 
he has fed the hungry, and clothed the naked; he has given 
sight to the blind : and for such virtues there is a reward on 
high of which all human memorials, all language of brass and 
stone, are but humble types and attempted imitations. 

Time and nature have had their course in diminishing the 
number of those whom we met here on the 17th of June, 1825. 
Most of the Revolutionary characters then present have since 

1 William Sullivan died in Boston in 1839, George Blake, in 1841 ; both 
gentlemen of great political and legal eminence. 

^ Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a distinguished merchant and philanthropist 
of Boston, founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for 
the Blind. He died Jan. 11, 1854. 



46 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

deceased ; and Lafayette sleeps in his native land. Yet the name 
and blood of Warren are with us ; the kindred of Putnam are 
also here ; and near me, universally beloved for his character 
and his virtues, and now venerable for his years, sits the son 
of the noble-hearted and daring Prescott.i Gideon Foster of 
Danvers, Enos Reynolds of Boxford, Phineas Johnson, Robert 
Andrews, Elijah Dresser, Josiah Cleaveland, Jesse Smith, Philip 
Bagley, Needham Maynard, Roger Plaisted, Joseph Stephens, 
Nehemiah Porter, and James Harvey, who bore arms for their 
country, either at Concord and Lexington on the 19th of April, 
or on Bunker Hill, all now far advanced in age, have come here 
to-day to look once more on the field where their valor was 
proved, and to receive a hearty outpouring of our respect. 

They have long outlived the troubles and dangers of the Revo- 
lution ; they have outhved the evils arising from the want of a 
united and efficient government ; they have outlived the menace 
of imminent dangers to the public liberty ; they have outlived 
nearly all their contemporaries : but they have not outlived, they 
cannot outlive, the affectionate gratitude of their country. Heav- 
en has not allotted to this generation an opportunity of rendering 
high services, and manifesting strong personal devotion, such as 
they rendered and manifested, and in such a cause as that which 
roused the patriotic fires of their youthful breasts, and nerved the 
strength of their arms. But we may praise what we cannot equal, 
and celebrate actions which we were not born to perform. Piil- 
chnim est belief ace re reipublicce^ etiatn be fie die ere hand absurdum est. 

The Bunker Hill Monument is finished. Here it stands. For- 
tunate in the high natural eminence on which it is placed, higher, 
infinitely higher, in its objects and purpose, it rises over the land 
and over the sea ; and, visible at their homes to three hundred 
thousand of the people of Massachusetts, it stands a memorial 
of the last, and a monitor to the present, and to all succeeding 

1 " William Prescott (since deceased, in 1844), son of Col. William Pres- 
cott, who commanded on the 17th of June, 1 775, and father of William IL 
Prescott, the historian." — Everett. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 47 

generations. I have spoken of the loftiness of its purpose. If 
it had been without any other design than the creation of a work 
of art, the granite of which it is composed would have slept in 
its native bed. It has a purpose, and that purpose gives it its 
character. That purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral 
grandeur. That well-known purpose it is which causes us to 
look up to it with a feeling of awe. It is itself the orator of this 
occasion. It is not from my lips, it could not be from any hu- 
man lips, that that strain of eloquence is this day to flow most 
competent to move and excite the vast multitudes around me. 
The powerful speaker stands motionless before us.i It is a plain 
shaft. It bears no inscriptions, fronting to the rising sun, from 
which the future antiquary shall wipe the dust. Nor does the 
rising stm cause tones of music to issue from its summit. But 
at the rising of the sun and at the setting of the sun, in the 
blaze of noonday, and beneath the milder effulgence of lunar 
hght, it looks, it speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of 
every American mind, and the awakening of glowing enthusiasm 
in every American heart. Its silent but awful utterance ; its 
deep pathos as it brings to our contemplation the 17th of June, 
1775, and the consequences which have resulted to us, to our 
country, and to the world, from the events of that day, and which 
we know must continue to rain influence on the destinies of man- 
kind to the end of time ; the elevation with which it raises us high 
above the ordinary feelings of life, — surpass all that the study of 
the closet, or even the inspiration of genius, can produce. To-day 
it speaks to us : its future auditories will be the successive gen- 
erations of men as they rise up before it and gather around it. 
Its speech will be of patriotism and courage, of civil and rehgious 
liberty, of free government, of the moral improvement and eleva- 
tion of mankind, and of the immortal memory of those who, witli 
heroic devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their country. 

1 It is related that at this point in his speech the orator was interrupted by 
a spontaneous burst of applause from his hearers, and that such was their 
enthusiasm, that it was several moments before he could proceed. 



48 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

In the older world, numerous fabrics still exist, reared by hu- 
man hands, but whose object has been lost in the darkness of 
ages. They are now monuments of nothing but the labor and 
skill which constructed them. 

The mighty Pyramid itself, half buried in the sands of Africa, has 
nothing to bring down and report to us but the power of kings 
and the servitude of the people. If it had any purpose beyond 
that of a mausoleum, such purpose has perished from history and 
from tradition. If a.sked for its moral object, its admonition, its 
sentiment, its instruction to mankind, or any high end in its erec- 
tion, it is silent, — silent as the millions which lie in the dust at its 
base, and in the catacombs which surround it. Without a just 
moral object, therefore, made known to man, though raised 
against the skies, it excites only conviction of power mixed with 
strange wonder. But if the civilization of the present race of 
men — founded as it is in sohd science, the true knowledge of 
nature, and vast discoveries in art, and which is elevated and 
purified by moral sentiment and by the truths of Christianity — be 
not destined to destruction before the final termination of human 
existence on earth, the object and purpose of this edifice will be 
known till that hour .shall come. And even if civilization should 
be subverted, and the truths of the Christian rehgion obscured 
by a new deluge of barbarism, tlie memory of Bunker Hill and 
the American Revolution will still be elements and parts of the 
knowledge which shall be possessed by the last man to whom 
the light of civilization and Christianity shall be extended. 

This celebration is honored by the presence of the chief execu- 
tive magistrate of the Union. An occasion so national in its 
object and character, and so much connected with that Revolu- 
tion from which the government sprang at the head of which he 
is placed, may well receive from him this mark of attention and 
respect. Well acquainted with Yorktown,^ the scene of the last 

1 President Tyler was a native of Virginia, and his birthplace was within 
less than forty miles of Yorktown. The surrender of the British army under 
Cornwallis, at Yorktown, occurred Oct. 19, 1 781. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 49 

great military struggle of the Revolution, his eye now surveys 
the field of Bunker Hill, the theater of the first of those impor- 
tant conflicts. He sees where Warren fell, where Putnam and 
Prescott and Stark and Knowlton and Brooks fought. He 
beholds the spot where a thousand trained soldiers of England 
were smitten to the earth, in the first effort of revolutionary war, 
by the arm of a bold and determined yeomanry contending for 
liberty and their country. And while all assembled here enter- 
tain towards him sincere personal good wishes and the high re- 
spect due to his elevated office and station, it is not to be doubted 
that he enters with true American feeling into the patriotic en- 
thusiasm kindled by the occasion which animates the multitudes 
that surround him. 

His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth, the Gov- 
ernor of Rhode Island, and the other distinguished public men 
whom we have the honor to receive as visitors and guests to-day, 
will cordially unite in a celebration connected with the great event 
of the Revolutionary War. 

No name in the history of 1775 and 1776 is more distinguished 
than that borne by an ex-president of the United States,^ whom 
we expected to see here, but whose ill health prevents his attend- 
ance. Whenever popular rights were to be asserted, an Adams 
was present ; and when the time came for the formal Declaration 
of Independence, it was the voice of an Adams that shook the 
halls of Congress. We wish we could have welcomed to us this 
day the inheritor of Revolutionary blood, and the just and worthy 
representative of high Revolutionary names, merit, and services. 

Banners and badges, processions and flags, announce to us 
that amidst this uncounted throng are thousands of natives of 
New England now residents in other States. Welcome, ye kin- 
dred names, with kindred blood ! From the broad savannas- 
of the South, from the newer regions of the West, from amidst 

1 John Quincy Adams (i 767-1848), the sixth President of the United States 
(1825-29). 

- Plains, or meadows. 

4 



50 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the hundreds of thousands of men of Eastern origin who culti- 
vate the rich valley of the Genesee, or live along the chain of 
the Lakes, from the mountains of Pennsylvania, and from the 
thronged cities of the coast, welcome, welcome ! Wherever else 
you may be strangers, here you are all at home. You assemble 
at this shrine of liberty, near the family altars at which your ear- 
liest devotions were paid to Heaven, near to the temples of 
w^orship first entered by you, and near to the schools and colleges 
in which vour education was received. You come hither \nth a 
glorious ancestry of liberty. You bring names which are on the 
rolls of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. You come, some 
of you, once more to be embraced by an aged Revolutionary 
father, or to receive another, perhaps a last, blessing, bestowed in 
love and tears, by a miOther, yet surviving to w^itness and to 
enjoy your prosperity and happiness. 

But if family associations and the recollections of the past 
bring you hither with greater alacrity, and mingle wnth your 
greeting much of local attachment and private affection, greeting 
also be given, free and hearty greeting, to every American citizen 
who treads this sacred soil with patriotic feeling, and respires with 
pleasure in an atmosphere perfumed with the recollections of 
1775 ! This occasion is respectable,^ nay, it is grand, it is sub- 
lime, by the nationality of its sentiment. Among the seventeen 
millions of happy people who form the American community, 
there is not one who has not an interest in this monument, as 
there is not one that has not a deep and abiding interest in that 
which it commemorates. 

"Woe betide the man who brings to tin's day's worship feeling 
less than wholly American ! Woe betide the man who can stand 
here with the fires of local resentments burning, or the purpose 
of fomenting local jealousies and the strifes of local interests fes- 
tering and rankling in his heart ! Union, established in justice, 
ill patriotism, and the most plain and obvious common interest; 

1 Tliis is a favorite worJ with Webster, ami he often gives ti> it an unusual 
significance. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 51 

union, founded on the same love of liberty, cemented by blood 
shed in the same common cause, — union has been the source of 
all our glory and greatness thus far, and is the ground of all our 
highest hopes. This column stands on union. I know not that 
it might not keep its position if the American Union, in the mad 
conflict of human passions, and in the strife of parties and fac- 
tions, should be broken up and destroyed. I know not that it 
would totter and fall to the earth, and mingle its fragments with 
the fragments of Liberty and the Constitution, when State should 
be separated from State, and faction and dismemberment obhter- 
ate forever all the hopes of the founders of our Republic and the 
great inheritance of their children. It might stand. But who, 
from beneath the weight of mortification and shame that would 
oppress him, could look up to behold it ? Whose eyeballs would 
not be seared by such a spectacle ? For my part, should I hve 
to such a time, I shall avert my eyes from it forever. 

It is not as a mere mihtarv encounter of hostile armies that 
the battle of Bunker Hill presents its principal claim to attention. 
Yet, even as a mere battle, there were circumstances attending 
it extraordinary in character, and entitling it to peculiar distinc- 
tion. It was fought on this eminence, in the neighborhood of 
yonder city, in the presence of many more spectators than there 
v/ere combatants in the conflict. Men, women, and children, 
from every commanding position, were gazing at the battle, and 
looking for its results with all the eagerness natural to those who 
knew that the issue was fraught with the deepest consequences 
to themselves personally, as well as to their country. Yet on the 
16th of June, 1775, there was nothing around this hill but \x'r- 
dure and culture. There was, indeed, the note of awful prepara- 
tion in Boston. There was the Provincial army at Cambridge, 
with its right flank resting on Dorchester, and its left on Chelsea. 
But here all was peace. Tranquillity reigned around. On the 
17th, everything was changed. On this eminence had arisen, in 
the night, a redoubt, built by Prescott, and in which he held 
command. Perceived by the enemy at dawn, it was immediately 



52 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

cannonaded from the floating batteries in the river, and from the 
opposite shore. And then ensued the hurried movement in Bos- 
ton, and soon the troops of Britain embarked in the attempt to 
dislodge the colonists. In an hour everything indicated an im- 
mediate and bloody conflict. Love of liberty on one side, proud 
defiance of rebellion on the other, hopes and fears, and courage 
and daring, on both sides, animated the hearts of the combatants 
as they hung on the edge of battle. 

I suppose it would be diflicult, in a mihtary point of view, to 
ascribe to the leaders on either side any just motive for the en- 
gagement which followed. On the one hand, it could not have 
been very important to the Americans to attempt to hem the 
British within the town, by advancing one single post a quarter 
of a mile ; while, on the other hand, if the British found it essen- 
tial to dislodge the American troops, they had it in their power 
at no expense of life. By moving up their ships and batteries, 
they could have completely cut off all communication with the 
mainland over the Neck, and the forces in the redoubt would 
have been reduced to a state of famine in forty-eight hours. 

But that was not the day for any such consideration on either 
side. Both parties were anxious to try the strength of their 
arms. The pride of England would not permit the "rebels," as 
she termed them, to defy her to the teeth ; and, without for a 
moment calculating the cost, the British general determined to 
destroy the fort immediately. On the other side, Prescott and 
his gallant followers longed and thirsted for a decisive trial of 
strength and of courage. They wished a battle, and wished it 
at once. And this is the true secret of the movements on this hill. 

I will not attempt to describe that battle. The cannonading, 
the landing of the British, their advance, the coolness with 
which the charge was met, the repulse, the second attack, the 
second repulse, the burning of Charlestown, and finally the 
closing assault and the .slow retreat of the Americans, — the his- 
tory of all these is familiar. 

But the consequences of the battle of Bunker Hill were greater 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 53 

than those of any ordinary conflict, ahhough between armies of 
far greater force, and terminating with more immediate advan- 
tage on the one side or the other. It was the first great battle 
of the Revolution, and not only the first blow, but the blow 
which determined the contest. It did not, indeed, put an end 
to the war ; but, in the then existing hostile state of feeling, the 
difficulties could only be referred to the arbitration of the sword. 
And one thing is certain, — that, after the New-England troops 
had shown themselves able to face and repulse the regulars, it 
was decided that peace never could be established but upon the 
basis of the independence of the Colonies. When the sun of 
that day went down, the event of independence was no longer 
doubtful. In a few days Washington heard of the battle, and 
he inquired if the militia had stood the fire of the regulars. When 
told that they had not only stood that fire, but reserved their 
own till the enemy was within eight rods, and then poured it in 
with tremendous effect, *' Then," exclaimed he, " the liberties of 
the country are safe ! " 

The consequences of this battle were just of the same impor- 
tance as the Revolution itself. 

If there was nothing of value in the principles of the American 
Revolution, then there is nothing valuable in the battle of Bunker 
Hill and its consequences. But if the Revolution was an era in 
the history of man favorable to human happiness, if it was an 
event which marked the progress of man all over the world from 
despotism to liberty, then this monument is not raised without 
cause. Then the batde of Bunker Hill is not an event unde- 
serving celebrations, commemorations, and rejoicings, now and 
in all coming times. 

What, then, is the true and peculiar principle of the American 
Revolution, and of the systems of government which it has con- 
firmed and established ? The truth is, that the American Revo- 
lution was not caused by the instantaneous discovery of principles 
of government before unheard of, or the practical adoption of 
political ideas such as had never before entered into the minds 



54 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

of men. It was but the full development of principles of gov- 
ernment, forms of society, and political sentiments, the origin of 
all which lay back two centuries in English and American history. 
The discovery of America, its colonization by the nations of 
Europe, the history and progress of the Colonies, from their 
establishment to the time when the principal of them threw off 
their allegiance to the respective states by which they had been 
planted, and founded governments of their own, constitute one 
of the most interesting portions of the annals of man. These 
events occupied three hundred years, during which period civil- 
ization and knowledge made steady progress in the Old World ; 
so that Europe, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, 
liad become greatly changed from that Europe which began the 
colonization of America at the close of the fifteenth or the com- 
mencement of the sixteenth. And what is most material to my 
present purpose is, that in the progress of the first of these cen- 
turies, that is to say, from the discovery of America to the settle- 
ments of Virginia and Massachusetts, political and religious 
events took place which most materially affected the state of 
society and the sentiments of mankind, especially in England 
and in parts of Continental Europe. After a few feeble and 
unsuccessful efforts by England, under Henry VI I., ^ to plant 
colonies in America, no designs of that kind were prosecuted for 
a long period, either by the English Government or any of its 
subjects. "Without inquiring into the causes of this delay, its 
consequences are sufficiently clear and striking. England, in 
this lap.se of a century, unknown to herself, but under the provi- 
dence of God and the influence of events, was fitting herself for 
the work of colonizing North America, on such principles, and 
by such men, as should spread the English name and English 
blood, in time, over a great portion of the Western hemisphere. 

1 It was during the rclgn of Ilcnry VII. that John Cabot, under a royal 
commission, discovered the coast of North America, — a discovery upon which 
the subsequent claims of the Englisli to jurisdiction on this continent were 
based. 



SECOXJJ BCXA'EK HILL ADDRESS. 55 

The commercial spirit was greatly fostered by several laws 
passed in the reign of Henry VII. ; and in the same reign en- 
couragement was given to arts and manufactures in the eastern 
counties, and some not unimportant modifications of the feudal 
system took place by allowing the breaking of entails.^ These 
and other measures, and other occurrences, were making way for 
a new class of society to emerge and show itself in a military 
and feudal age ; a middle class, between the barons or great 
landholders and the retainers of the Crown on the one side, and 
the tenants of the Crown and barons, and agricultural and other 
laborers, on the other side. With the rise and growth of this 
new class of society, not only did commerce and the arts in- 
crease, but better education, a greater degree of knowledge, 
juster notions of the true ends of government, and sentiments 
favorable to civil liberty, began to spread abroad, and become 
more and more common. But the plants springing from these 
seeds were of slow growth. The character of English society 
had indeed begun to undergo a change ; but changes of national 
character are ordinarily the work of time. Operative causes 
were, however, evidently in existence, and sure to produce, 
ultimately, their proper effect. From the accession of Henry 
VII. to the breaking out of the civil wars,'^ England enjoyed 
much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than 
for a long period before, and during the controversy between the 
houses of York and Lancaster.^ These years of peace were fa- 
vorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts aug- 
mented general and individual knowledge ; and knowledge is the 
only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty. 

1 Laws forbidding the owner of an estate to transfer it to any person ex- 
cept the legal heir. 

2 That is, from 1485 to about 1640. 

3 This conflict between the two great families of England, each claiming 
the right to the royal succession, is known in history as the War of the 
Roses. It began in 1455, and continued until the death of Richard ITT. in 
1485. 



56 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Other powerful causes soon came into active play. The Ref- 
ormation of Luther i broke out, kindHng up the minds of men 
afresh, leading to new habits of thought, and awakening in indi- 
viduals energies before unknown even to themselves. The reli- 
gious controversies of this period changed society as well as re- 
ligion : indeed, it would be easy to prove, if this occasion were 
proper for it, that they changed society to a considerable extent, 
where they did not change the religion of the state. They 
changed man himself, in his modes of thought, his consciousness 
of his own powers, and his desire of intellectual attainment. The 
spirit of commercial and foreign adventure, therefore, on the one 
hand, which had gained so much strength and influence since the 
time of the discovery of America ; and, on the other, the assertion 
and maintenance of religious liberty, having their source indeed 
in the Reformation, but continued, diversified, and constantly 
strengthened by the subsequent divisions of sentiment and opin- 
ion among the Reformers themselves ; and this love of religious 
liberty, drawing after it, or bringing along with it, as it always 
does, an ardent devotion to the principle of civil liberty also, — 
were the powerful influences under which character was formed, 
and men trained, for the great work of introducing English civil- 
ization, English law, and, what is more than all, Anglo-Saxon 
blood, into the wilderness of North America. Raleigh 2 and his 
companions may be considered as the creatures, principally, of 
the first of these causes. High-spirited, full of the love of per- 
sonal adventure, excited, too, in some degree, by the hopes of 
sudden riches from the discovery of mines of the precious metals, 
and not unwilling to diversify the labors of settling a colony with 
occasional cruising against the Spaniards in the West Indian seas, 

1 This great religious and political movement, which engaged the attention 
of a large jiortion of Europe during the sixteenth century, is so called from 
Martin Luther, its most distinguished promoter. The Reformation was 
begun in Switzerland by Zwingli in 1516; in Germany, by Luther in 15^7 > 
and in lOngland, by Henry VIIL in 1534. 

2 Sir Walter Raleigh (i 552-1618). 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 57 

they crossed and recrossed the ocean with a frequency which 
surprises us when we consider the state of navigation, and which 
evinces a most daring spirit. 

The other cause peopled New England. The "Mayflower" 
sought our shores under no high-wrought spirit of commercial 
adventure, no love of gold, no mixture of purpose warlike or 
hostile to any human being. Like the dove from the ark, she 
had put forth only to find rest. Solemn supplications on the 
shore of the sea in Holland had invoked for her, at her depar- 
ture, the blessings of Providence. The stars which guided her 
were the unobscured constellations of civil and religious hberty. 
Her deck was the altar of the living God. Fervent prayers on 
bended knees mingled, morning and evening, with the voices 
of ocean and the sighing of the wind in her shrouds. Every 
prosperous breeze which, gently swelling her sails, helped the 
Pilgrims onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise ; 
and when the elements were wrought into fury, neither the tem- 
pest, tossing their fragile bark like a feather, nor the darkness and 
howhng of the midnight storm, ever disturbed in man or woman 
the firm and settled purpose of their souls, to undergo all and to do 
all that the meekest patience, the boldest resolution, and the highest 
trust in God, could enable human beings to suffer or to perform. 

Some differences may, doubdess, be traced at this day between 
the descendants of the early colonists of Virginia and those of 
New England, owing to the different influences and different cir- 
cumstances under which the respective setdements were made, 
but only enough to create a pleasing variety in the midst of a 
general family resemblance. 

" Facies non omnibus una, 
Nee diversa tamcn ; qiialis dccet sororum." 1 

But the habits, sentiments, and objects of both soon became 
modified by local causes, growing out of their condition in the 

1 " The features are not the same in all, nor yet very different : they arc 
such as those of sisters ought to be." — Oviu. 



58 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

New World ; and as this condition was essentially alike in both, 
and as both at once adopted the same general rules and prin- 
ciples of English jurisprudence, and became accustomed to the 
authority of representative bodies, these differences gradually 
diminished. They disappeared by the progress of time and the 
influence of intercourse. The necessity of some degree of union 
and cooperation to defend themselves against the savage tribes, 
tended to excite in them mutual respect and regard. They 
fought together in the wars against France. ^ The great and 
common cause of the Revolution bound them to one another by 
new links of brotherhood ; and at length the present constitution 
of government united them, happily and gloriously, to form the 
great republic of the world, and bound up their interests and for- 
tunes, till the whole earth sees that there is now for them, in pres- 
ent possession as well as in future hope, but " One Country, One 
Constitution, and One Destiny." 

The colonization of the tropical region, and the whole of the 
southern parts of the continent, by Spain and Portugal, was con- 
ducted on other principles, under the influence of other motives, 
and followed by far different consequences. From the time of 
its discovery, the Spanish Government pushed forward its settle- 
ments in America, not only with vigor, but with eagerness ; so 
that, long before the first permanent English settlement had been 
accomplished in what is now the United States, Spain had con- 
quered Mexico, Peru, and Chile, and stretched her power over 
nearly all the territory she ever acquired on this continent. The 
rapidity of these conquests is to be ascribed, in a great degree, to 
the eagerness, not to say the rapacity, of those numerous bands 
of adventurers who were stimulated bv individual interests and 
I)rivate hopes to subdue immense regions, and take possession of 
them in the iiame of the Crown of Spain. The mines of gold 
and silver were the incitements to these efforts ; and accordingly 

1 Known in American history as King William's War (1689-97), Queen 
Anne's War (1702-13), King George's War (1744-48), and the French and 
Indian War (1754-63). 



SECOXn BL'XA'ER 1/7 L J. A DDK ESS. 59 

settlements were generall)' made, and Spanish authority estab- 
hshed, immediately on the subjugation of territory, that the native 
population might be set to work by their new Spanish masters in 
the mines\ From these facts, the love of gold — gold not pro- 
duced by industry, nor accumulated by commerce, but gold dug 
from its native bed in the bowels of the earth, and that earth 
ravished from its rightful possessors by every possible degree of 
enormity, cruelty, and crime — was long the governing passion in 
Spanish wars and Spanish settlements in America. Even Colum- 
bus himself did not wholly escape the influence of this base motive. 
In his early voyages we find him passing from island to island, 
inquiring everywhere for gold, as if God had opened the New 
World to the knowledge of the Old, only to gratify a passion 
equally senseless and sordid, and to offer up millions of an un- 
offending race of men to the destruction of the sword, sharpened 
both bv cruelty and rapacity. And yet Columbus was far above 
his age and country ; enthusiastic, indeed, but sober, religious, 
and magnanimous ; born to great things, and capable of high 
sentiments, as his noble discourse before Ferdinand and Isabella, 
as well as the whole history of his life, shows. Probably he sac- 
rificed much to the known sentiments of others, and addressed 
to his followers motives likely to influence them. At the same 
time, it is evident that he himself looked upon the world which 
he discovered as a world of wealth all ready to be seized and 
enjoyed. 

The conquerors and the European settlers of Spanish America 
were mainly military commanders and common soldiers. The 
monarchy of Spain was not transferred to this hemisphere ; but it 
acted in it, as it acted at home, through its ordinary means and 
its true representative, military force. The robbery and destruc- 
tion of the native race was the achievement of standing armies, 
in the right of the King and by his authority ; fighting in his name, 
for the aggrandizement of his power and the extension of his 
prerogatives, with military ideas under arbitrary maxims, — a 
portion of that dreadful instrumentality by which a perfect des- 



6o DANIEL WEBSTER. 

potism governs a people. As there was no liberty in Spain, how 
could liberty be transmitted to Spanish colonies ? 

The colonists of English America were of the people, and a 
people already free. They were of the middle, industrious, and 
already prosperous class, the inhabitants of commercial and 
manufacturing cities, among whom liberty first revived and re- 
spired after a sleep of a thousand years in the bosom of the Dark 
Ages. Spain descended on the New World in the armed and 
terrible image of her monarchy and her soldiery ; England ap- 
proached it in the winning and popular garb of personal rights, 
public protection, and civil freedom. England transplanted hb- 
erty to America ; Spain transplanted powder. England, through 
the agency of private companies and the efforts of individuals, 
colonized this part of North America by industrious individuals, 
making their own way in the wilderness, defending themselves 
against the savages, recognizing their right to the soil, and with 
a general honest purpose of introducing knowledge as well as 
Christianity among them. Spain stooped on South America like 
a vulture on its prey. Everything was force. Territories were 
acquired by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed by fire and 
sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell by fire and 
sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire 
and sword. 

Behold, then, fellow citizens, the difference resulting from the 
operation of the two principles ! Here, to-day, on the summit 
of Bunker Hill, and at the foot of this monument, behold the 
difference ! I would that the fifty thousand voices present could 
procLiim it with a shout which should be heard over the globe. 
Our inheritance was of liberty, secured and regulated by law, and 
enlightened by religion and knowledge ; that of South America was 
of power, — stern, unrelenting, tyrannical, military power. And 
now look to the consequences of the two principles on the general 
and aggregate happiness of tlie human race. Behold the results 
in all the regions conquered by Cortes and Pizarro, and the con- 
trasted resuUs here. I suppose the territory of the United States 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 6 1 

may amount to one eighth, or one tenth, of that colonized by- 
Spain on this continent ; and yet in all that vast region there are 
but between one and two millions of people of European color 
and European blood, while in the United States there are four- 
teen milhons who rejoice in their descent from the people of the 
more northern part of Europe. 

But we may follow the difference in the original principle of 
colonization, and in its character and objects, still further. We 
must look to moral and intellectual results ; we must consider 
consequences, not only as they show themselves in hastening or 
retarding the increase of population and the supply of physical 
wants, but in their civilfzation, improvement, and happiness. We 
must inquire what progress has been made in the true science of 
hberty, in the knowledge of the great principles of self-govern- 
ment, and in the progress of man as a social, moral, and rehgious 
being. 

I would not willingly say anything on this occasion discour- 
teous to the new governments founded on the demolition of the 
power of the Spanish monarchy. They are yet on their trial, 
and I hope for a favorable result. But truth, sacred truth, and 
fidelity to the cause of civil liberty, compel me to say, that 
hitherto they have discovered quite too much of the spirit of 
that monarchy from which they separated themselves. Quite 
too frequent resort is made to military force ; and quite too 
much of the substance of the people is consumed in maintaining 
armies, not for defense against foreign aggression, but for enfor- 
cing obedience to domestic authority. Standing armies are the 
oppressive instruments for governing the people in the hands of 
hereditary and arbitrary monarchs. A military republic, a gov- 
ernment founded on mock elections and supported only by the 
sword, is a movement indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous 
movement, from the regular and old-fashioned monarchical sys- 
tems. If men would enjoy the blessings of republican govern- 
ment, they must govern themselves by reason, by mutual counsel 
and consultation, by a sense and feeling of general interest, and 



62 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

by the acquiescence of the minority in the will of the majority, 
properiy expressed ; and, above all, the military must be kept, 
according to the language of our Bill of Rights, in strict subor- 
dination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not both 
learned and practiced, there can be no political freedom. Ab- 
surd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of con- 
stitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by 
military leaders, and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the 
point of the sword. 

Making all allowance for situation and climate, it cannot be 
doubted by intelligent minds that the difference now existing 
between North and South America is justly attributable, in a 
great degree, to pohtical institutions in the Old World and in the 
New. And how broad that difference is ! Suppose an assembly, 
in one of the valleys or on the side of one of the mountains of 
the southern half of the hemisphere, to be held this day in the 
neighborhood of a large city — what would be the scene pre- 
sented ? Yonder is a volcano, flaming and smoking, but shed- 
ding no light, moral or intellectual. At its foot is the mine, 
sometimes yielding, perhaps, large gains to capital, Init in which 
labor is destined to eternal and unrequited toil, and followed only 
by penury and beggary. The city is filled with armed men ; not 
a free people, armed and coming forth voluntarily to rejoice in a 
public festivity, but hireling troops, supported by forced loans, 
excessive impositions on commerce, or taxes wrung from a half- 
fed and a half-clothed population. For the great there are palaces 
covered with gold ; for the poor there are hovels of the meanest 
sort. There is an ecclesiastical hierarchy, enjoying the wealth of 
princes ; but there are no means of education for the people. Do 
public improvements favor intercourse between place and place? 
So far from this, the traveler cannot jiass from town to town 
without danger, every mile, of robbery and assassination. I 
would not overcharge or exaggerate this picture ; but its princi- 
pal features are all too truly sketched. 

And how does it contrast with the scene now actuallv before 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 63 

US ? Look round upon these fields ; they are verdant and beau- 
tiful, well cultivated, and at this moment loaded with the riches 
of the early harvest. I'he hands which till them are those of the 
free owners of the soil, enjoying equal riglits, and protected by 
law from oppression and tyranny. Look to the thousand vessels 
in our sight, filling the harbor, or covering the neighboring sea. 
They are the vehicles of a profitable commerce, carried on by 
men who know that the profits of their hardy enterprise, when 
they make them, are their own ; and this commerce is encouraged 
and regulated by wise laws, and defended, when need be, by the 
valor and patriotism of the country. Look to that fair city, the 
abode of so much diffused wealth, so much general happiness 
and comfort, so much personal independence, and so much gen- 
eral knowledge, and not undistinguished, I may be permitted to 
add, for hospitality and social refinement. She fears no forced 
contributions, no siege or sacking from military leaders of rival 
factions. The hundred temples in which her citizens worship 
God are in no danger of sacrilege. The regular administration 
of the laws encounters no obstacle. The long processions of 
children and youth which you see this day issuing by thousands 
from her free schools, prove the care and anxiety with which a 
popular government provides for the education and morals of 
the people. Everywhere there is order ; everywhere there is 
security. Everywhere the law reaches to the highest, and reaches 
to the lowest, to protect all in their rights, and to restrain all from 
wrong; and over all hovers Liberty, — that Liberty for which our 
fathers fought and fell on this very spot, — with her eye ever 
watchful and her eagle wing ever wide outspread. 

The colonics of Spain, from their origin to their end, were sub- 
ject to the sovereign authority of the mother country. Their 
government, as well as their commerce, was a strict home monop- 
oly. If we add to this the established usage of filling important 
posts in the administration of the colonies exclusively by natives 
of Old Spain, thus cutting off forever all hopes of honorable pre- 
ferment from every man born in the Western hemisphere, causes 



64 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

enough rise up before us at once to account fully for the subse- 
quent history and character of these provinces. The viceroys 
and provincial governors of Spain were never at home in their 
governments in America. They did not feel that they were of 
the people whom they governed. Their official character and 
employment have a good deal of resemblance to those of the 
proconsuls of Rome in Asia, Sicily, and Gaul, but obviously no 
resemblance to those of Carver and Winthrop, and very little to 
those of the governors of Virginia after that Colony had estab- 
hshed a popular House of Burgesses. 

The English colonists in America, generally speaking, were 
men who were seeking new homes in a new world. They brought 
v/ith them their families and all that was most dear to them. This 
was especially the case with the colonists of Plymouth and Mas- 
sachusetts. Many of them were educated men, and all possessed 
their full share, according to their social condition, of the knowl- 
edge and attainments of that age. The distinctive characteristic 
of their settlement is the introduction of the civilization of Europe 
into a wilderness, without bringing with it the political institutions 
of Europe. The arts, sciences, and literature of England came 
over with the settlers. That great portion of the common law 
which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of 
men came also. The jury came ; the habeas corpus came ; the 
testamentary power came ; and the law of inheritance and de- 
scent came also, except that part of it which recognizes the rights 
of primogeniture, 1 which either did not come at all, or soon gave 
way to the rule of equal partition of estates among children. But 
the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the church, 
as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be 
framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things. 
But it could not be doubtful what should be the nature and char- 
acter of these institutions. A general social equality prevailed 
among the settlers, and an equality of political rights seemed the 

1 "Rights of primogeniture," i.e., the law providing that the eldest son 
should inherit the entire estate of his father. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 65 

natural, if not the necessary consequence. After forty years of 
revolution, violence, and war, the people of France have placed 
at the head of the fundamental instrument of their government, 
as the great boon obtained by all their sufferings and sacrifices, 
the declaration that all Frenchmen are equal before the law. 
What France has reached only by the expenditure of so much 
blood and treasure, and the perpetration of so much crime, the 
English colonists obtained by simply changing their place, carry- 
ing with them the intellectual and moral culture of Europe, and 
the personal and social relations to which they were accustomed, 
but leaving behind their political institutions. It has been said 
with much vivacity, that the felicity of the American colonists 
consisted in their escape from the past. This is true so far as 
respects political establishments, but no farther. They brought 
with them a full portion of all the riches of the past, in science, 
in art, in morals, religion, and literature. The Bible came with 
them. And it is not to be doubted, that to the free and univer- 
sal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted 
for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is a book of faith, and 
a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of reli- 
gion, of especial revelation from God ; but it is also a book which 
teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, 
and his equality with his fellow man. 

Bacon and Locke, and Shakespeare and Milton, also came 
with the colonists. It was the object of the first settlers to form 
new political systems ; but all that belonged to cultivated man, to 
family, to neighborhood, to social relations, accompanied them. 
In the Doric ^ phrase of one of our own historians, " They came to 
settle on bare creation ; " but their settlement in the wilderness, 
nevertheless, was not a lodgment of nomadic tribes, a mere rest- 
ing place of roaming savages. It was the beginning of a per- 
manent community, the fixed residence of cultivated men. Not 
only was English literature read, but English, good English, was 
spoken and written, before the ax had made way to let in the 

1 Plain, unadorned. 

5 



66 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

sun upon the habitations and fields of Plymouth and Massachu- 
setts. And, whatever may be said to the contrary, a correct use 
of the English language is, at this day, more general throughout 
the United States than it is throughout England herself. 

But another grand characteristic is, that in the English Colonies 
pohtical affairs were left to be managed by the colonists them- 
selves. This is another fact w^holly distinguishing them in char- 
acter, as it has distinguished them in fortune, from the colonists 
of Spain. Here lies the foundation of that experience in self- 
government which has preserved order and security and regu- 
larity amidst the play of popular institutions. Home govern- 
ment was the secret of the prosperity of the North- American 
settlements. The more distinguished of the New-England colo- 
nists, with a most remarkable sagacity and a long-sighted reach 
into futurity, refused to come to America unless they could bring 
with them charters providing for the administration of their 
affairs in this country. They saw from the first the evils of 
being governed in the New World by a power fixed in the Old. 
Acknowledging the general superiority of the Crown, they still 
insisted on the right of passing local laws, and of local adminis- 
tration. And history teaches us the justice and the value of this 
determination in the example of Virginia. The early attempts 
to setde that Colony failed, sometimes with the most melancholy 
and fatal consequences, from want of knowledge, care, and atten- 
tion on the part of those who had the charge of their affairs in 
England ; and it was only after the issuing of the third charter 
that its prosperity fairly commenced. The cause was, that by 
that third charter the people of Virginia, for by this time they 
deserved to be so called, were allowed to constitute and establish 
the first popular representative assembly which ever convened 
on this condnent, — the Virginia House of Burgesses. ^ 

The great elements, then, of the American system of govern- 
ment, originally introduced by the colonists, and which were early 

1 The first House of Burgesses in Virginia was convened by Gov. Yeard- 
ley in 1619, thirteen years after the landing at Jamestown. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 67 

in operation, and ready to be developed more and more as the 
progress of events should justify or demand, were : — 

Escape from the existing poHtical systems of Europe, includ- 
ing its religious hierarchies,^ but the continued possession and 
enjoyment of its science and arts, its literature and its manners ; 

Home government, or the power of making in the Colony the 
municipal laws which were to govern it ; 

Equality of rights ; 

Representative assemblies, or forms of government founded on 
popular elections. 

Few topics are more inviting, or more fit for philosophical 
discussion, than the effect on the happiness of mankind of in- 
stitutions founded upon these principles ; or, in other words, the 
influence of the New World upon the Old. 

Her obligations to Europe for science and art, laws, literature, 
and manners, America acknowledges as she ought, with respect 
and gratitude. The people of the United States, descendants of 
the English stock, grateful for the treasures of knowledge derived 
from their English ancestors, admit also, with thanks and filial 
regard, that among those ancestors, under the culture of Hamp- 
den and Sidney - and other assiduous friends, that seed of popu- 
lar liberty first germinated, which on our soil has shot up to its 
full height, until its branches overshadow all the land. 

But America has not failed to make returns. If she has not 
wholly canceled the obligation, or equaled it by others of like 
weight, she has at least made respectable advances towards re- 
paying the debt. And she admits that, standing in the midst 
of civilized nations and in a civilized age, a nation among na- 
tions, there is a high part which she is expected to act for the 
general advancement of human interests and human welfare. 

1 Governments by the priesthood. 

2 John Hampden (1594-1643) and Algernon Sidney (1622-83), English 
patriots distinguished for their fearless advocacy of the rights of the jieople 
in opposition to kingly tyranny. 



68 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

American mines have filled the mints of Europe with the pre- 
cious metals. The productions of the American soil and climate 
have poured out their abundance of luxm'ies for the tables of the 
rich and of necessaries for the sustenance of the poor. Birds 
and animals of beauty and value have been added to the Euro- 
pean stocks ; and transplantations from the unequaled riches of 
our forests have mingled themselves profusely with the elms and 
ashes and druidical oaks of England. 

America has made contributions to Europe far more impor- 
tant. Who can estimate the amount, or the value, of the aug- 
mentation of the commerce of the world that has resulted from 
America? Who can imagine to himself what would now be the 
shock to the Eastern Continent, if the Atlantic were no longer 
traversable, or if there were no longer American productions or 
American markets ? 

But America exercises influences, or holds out examples, for 
the consideration of the Old World, of a much higher, because 
they are of a moral and political character. 

America has furnished to Europe proof of the fact that popu- 
lar institutions, founded on equality and the principle of repre- 
sentation, are capable of maintaining governments able to secure 
the rights of person, property, and reputation. 

America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass 
of mankind, — that portion which in Europe is called the laboring, 
or lower class, — to raise them to self-respect, to make them com- 
petent to act a part in the great right and great duty of self-gov- 
ernment ; and she has proved that this may be done by education 
and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example, a 
thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented be- 
fore, to those nine tenths of the human race who are born with- 
out hereditary fortune or hereditary rank. 

America has furnished to the world the character of Washing- 
ton. And, if our American institutions had done nothing else, 
that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. 

Wasln'ngton ! " First in war, first in peace, and first in the 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 69 

hearts of his countrymen ! " ^ Washington is all our own ! The 
enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the 
United States hold him prove them to be worthy of such a 
countryman ; w^hile his reputation abroad reflects the highest 
honor on his country. I w^ould cheerfully put the question to- 
day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, What character 
of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of history, 
most pure, most respectable, most subhme ? and I doubt not, 
that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would 
be, Washington ! 

The structure now standing before us, by its uprightness, its 
sohdity, its durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His 
public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on 
which it stands ; his personal motives, as pure as the serene 
heaven in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, 
it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column 
which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of 
a single city or a single State, but by all the families of man, 
ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Wash- 
ington. In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the 
other, in all its titles to immortal love, admiration, and renown, 
it is an American production. It is the embodiment and vindi- 
cation of our Transatlantic hberty. Born upon our soil, of par- 
ents also bom upon it ; never for a moment having had sight of 
the Old World ; instructed, according to the modes of his time, 
only in the spare, plain, but wholesome elementary knowledge 
which our institutions provide for the children of the people ; 
growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of 
American society ; living, from infancy to manhood and age, 
amidst our expanding but not luxurious civilization ; partaking 
in our great destiny of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed 
nature and uncivihzed man, our agony of glory, the war of Inde- 
pendence, our great victory of peace, the formation of the Union 

1 These words were first used by Henry Lee in his oration on the death 
of Washington. 



70 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

and the establishment of the Constitution, — he is all, all our 
own ! Washington is ours. That crowded and glorious life, — 

*' Where multitudes of virtues passed along, 
Each pressing foremost, in the mighty throng 
Ambitious to be seen, then making room 
For greater multitudes that were to come," — 

that life was the life of an American citizen. 

I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened 
moment of the state, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies 
and the misgivings of friends, I turn to that transcendent name 
for courage and for consolation. To him who denies or doubts 
whether our fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, 
with the security of property, with the pursuits and advancement 
of happiness ; to him who denies that our forms of government 
are capable of producing exaltation of soul and the passion of 
true glory ; to him who denies that we have contributed anything 
to the stock of great lessons and great examples, — to all these I 
reply by pointing to W^ashington. 

And now, friends and fellow citizens, it is time to bring this 
discourse to a close. 

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the 
prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the 
future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations 
to perform corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let 
us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich in- 
heritance which we have received from our fathers. Tet us feel 
our personal responsibihty, to the full extent of our power and 
influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and reh- 
gious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion and 
morals and knowledge, that can make men respectable i and 
happy under any form of government. Let us hold fast the 
great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individ- 

1 See note, p. 50. 



SECOND BUNKER HILL ADDRESS. 71 

uals ; that no government is respectable ^ which is not just ; that 
without unspotted purity of pubhc faith, without sacred pubHc 
principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no 
machinery of laws, can give dignity to pohtical society. In our 
day and generation let ns seek to raise and impro^•e the moral 
sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an 
elevated and improved future. And when both we and our 
children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for 
all hving, may love of country and pride of country glow with 
equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood 
shall have descended ! And then, when honored and decrepit 
age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of 
ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one 
shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its con- 
struction, and the great and glorious events with which it is con- 
nected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, 
"Thank God, I — I also — am an American !" 

1 See note, p. 50. 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER IN THE CITY OF 

WASHINGTON, ON THE 2 2D OF FEBRUARY, 1832, THE 

CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S 

BIRTHDAY. 



1RISE, gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great 
man in commemoration of whose birth, and in honor of 
whose character and services, we are here assembled. 

I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one 
present, when I say that there is something more than ordinarily 
solemn and affecting in this occasion. 

We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is inti- 
mately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the 
prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our 
country. That name was of power to rally a nation in the hour 
of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities ; that name 
shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide 
the country's friends ; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her 
foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attract- 
ing to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, 
and the whole world's respect. That name, descending with all 
time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the lan- 
guages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be 
pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose 
breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human 
liberty. 

We perform this grateful duty, gentlemen, at the expiration of 

72 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 73 

a hundred years from his birth, near the place, so cherished and 
beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital 
which bears his own immortal name. 

All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly 
influenced by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or 
of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and 
deepens the impression, of events with which they are historical- 
ly connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken 
feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the 
fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they were 
ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels 
the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit 
that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these 
places distinguished, still hovered round, with power to move and 
excite all who in future time may approach them. 

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with 
which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime 
virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in 
human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should 
be false to our own nature if Ave did not indulge in the spontane- 
ous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover 
of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest 
models ; and that love of country may be well suspected which 
affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost 
and absorbed in the abstract feehng, and becomes too elevated 
or too refined to glow with fer\'or in the commendation or the 
love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if 
one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care noth- 
ing for Homer or Milton ; so passionately attached to eloquence 
as to be indifferent to Tully 1 and Chatham ; 2 or such a devotee 
to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of beauty, pro- 
portion, and expression, as to regard the masterpieces of Raphael ^ 

1 Alarcus Tulliiis Cicero, the most famous Roman orator (106-43 B.C.). 

2 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the " Great Commoner" (170CS-7S). 

3 Raphael, or Raffaelle Santi d'Urbino, Italian painter (1483-1520). 



74 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

and Michael Angelo ^ with coldness or contempt. We may be 
assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, 
loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her 
friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend 
and commemorate them. The vokmtary outpoming of the public 
feeling made to-day, from the North to the South, and from the 
East to the West, proves this sentiment to be both just and nat- 
ural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and 
in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices 
to-day bespeak grateful hearts and a freshened recollection of 
the virtues of the Father of his Country. And it will be so in 
all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of 
regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to them- 
selves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to 
be what they behold ; they will contemplate his character till all 
its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted 
vision, as the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains 
of Babylon, gazed at the stars till they saw them form into 
clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of 
the beholders with the united blaze of a thousand lights. 

Gentlemen, we are at a point of a century from the birth of 
Washington ; and what a century it has been ! During its course, 
the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geo- 
metric velocity, accomplishing for human inteUigence and human 
freedom more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries 
preceding. AVashington stands at the commencement of a new 
era, as well as at the head of the New W^orld. A century from the 
birth of AV^ashington has clianged the world. The country of 
Washington has been the theater on which a great part of that 
change has been wrought, and AVashington himself a principal 
agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his 
country are equally full of wonders ; and of both he is the chief. 

If the poetical prediction uttered a few years before his birth 
be true ; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the grandest 

1 Michael Angelo Buonarroti, Italian painter and sculptor (14^5-1564). 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHIXGTOX. 75 

exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made 
on this theater of the Western world ; if it be true that 

"The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day : 
Time's noblest offspring is the last,"i — 

how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately 
opened, how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but 
by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington ? 
Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of lib- 
erty was struck out in his own country which has since kindled 
into a flame, and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of 
a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in 
arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement of naviga- 
tion, and in all that relates to the civihzation of man. But it is 
the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual 
man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the 
whole long train of other improvements, which has most remark- 
ably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not made 
its progress, hke Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity 
in trifles ; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed 
round the old circles of thought and action ; but it has assumed 
a new character ; it has raised itself from bc?ieath governments to 
a participation /// governments ; it has mixed moral and political 
objects with the daily pursuits of individual men ; and, with a 
freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied 
to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. 
It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has tri- 
umphed over the feudal principle ; when society has maintained 
its rights against military power, and established, on foundations 
never hereafter to be shaken, its competency to govern itself. 

1 From a poem entided On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learn- 
ing in America, written by Bishop Berkeley in 1724. The first line of tlie 

stanza is, 

" Westward the course of empire takes its way." 



76 DAXIEL WEBSTER. 

It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington, that having 
been intrusted in Revolutionary times with the supreme mihtary 
command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for 
wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the 
first government in which an attempt was to be made on a large 
scale to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written 
constitution and of a pure representative principle. A govern- 
ment was to be estabhshed, without a throne, without an aristoc- 
racy, without castes, orders, or privileges ; and this government, 
instead of being a democracy, existing and acting within the 
walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast countr}% of 
different climates, interests, and habits, and of various commun- 
ions of our common Christian faith. The experiment certainly 
was entirely new. A popular government of this extent, it was 
evident, could be framed only by carrying into full effect the 
principle of representation or of delegated power ; and the world 
was to see whether society could, by the strength of this princi- 
ple, maintain its own peace and good government, carry forward 
its own great interests, and conduct itself to political renown and 
glory. By the benignity of Providence, this experiment, so full 
of interest to us and to our posterity forever, so full of interest, 
indeed, to the world in its present generation and in all its gen- 
erations to come, was suffered to commence under the guidance 
of Washington. Destined for this high career, he was fitted for 
it by wisdom, by virtue, by patriotism, by discretion, by whatever 
can inspire confidence in man towards man. In entering on the 
untried scenes, early disappointment and the premature extinc- 
tion of all hope of success would have been certain, had it not 
been that there did exist thn^ughout the country, in a most ex- 
traordinary degree, an unwavering trust in him who stood at the 
helm. 

I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole world was and is in- 
terested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so ? Do 
we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the career 
which this government is runnins is among the most attractive 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 77 

objects to the civilized world ? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it 
true that at this moment that love of liberty, and that understand- 
ing of its true principles, which are flying over the whole earth 
as on the wings of all the winds, are really and truly of American 
origin ? 

At the period of the birth of Washington, there existed in 
Europe no political liberty in large communities, except in the 
provinces of Holland, and except that England herself had set a 
great example, so far as it went, by her glorious Revolution of 
1688. Everywhere else despotic power was predominant, and 
the feudal or military principle held the mass of mankind in 
hopeless bondage. One half of Europe was crushed beneath the 
Bourbon scepter ; and no conception of political liberty, no hope 
even of rehgious toleration, existed among that nation which was 
America's first ally. The king was the state,^ the king was the 
country, the king was all. There was one king, with power not 
derived from his people, and too high to be questioned ; and the 
rest were all subjects, with no political right but obedience. All 
above was intangible power ; all below, quiet subjection. A 
recent occurrence in the French Chambers shows us how public 
opinion on these subjects is changed. A minister had spoken of 
the " king's subjects." " There are no subjects," exclaimed hun- 
dreds of voices at once, " in a country where the people make 
the king ! " 

Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, 
nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has 
stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an 
emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return 
void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of tlie earth. 
Our great, our high duty is to show, in our own example, that 
this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power ; that 
its benignity is as great as its strength ; lliat its efficiency to 
secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal 

1 An allusion to the famous dictum of Louis XIV., " ZVA//* t\st nioi" 
(" I am the state "). See p. 37. 



78 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principahties and 
powers. The world at this moment is regarding us with a will- 
ing, but something of a fearful admiration. Its deep and awful 
anxiety is to learn whether free states may be stable, as well as 
free ; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared : 
in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a 
vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth estabHshed, 
illustrated, and brought into practice in the country of Washington. 

Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit and the whole circle 
of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold 
in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. 
If we fail, who shall venture the repetition ? If our example 
shall prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of terror, not 
fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall 
the world look for free models ? If this great Western Sun be 
struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp 
of hberty hereafter be lighted ? What other orb shall emit a ray 
to glimmer even, on the darkness of the world ? 

There is no danger of our overrating or overstating the impor- 
tant part which we are now acting in human affairs. It should 
not flatter our personal self-respect ; but it should reanimate our 
patriotic virtues, and inspire us widi a deeper and more solemn 
sense, both of our privileges and of our duties. We cannot wish 
better for our country nor for the world than that the same 
spirit which influenced W^ashington may influence all who suc- 
ceed him; and that the same blessing from above, which at- 
tended his efforts, may also attend theirs. 

The principles of Washington's administration are not left 
doubtful. They are to be found in the Constitution itself, in 
the great measures recommended and approved by him, in his 
speeches to Congress, and in that most interesting paper, his 
" Farewell Address to the People of the United States." The 
success of the government under his administration is the highest 
proof of the soundness of these principles. And, after an experi- 
ence of thirty- five years, what is there which an enemy could 



THE CHARACTER OF WASinXGTOX. 79 

condemn ? What is there which either his friends, or the friends 
of the country, could wish to have been otherwise ? I speak, of 
course, of great measures and leading principles. 

In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. 
He stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he 
told the country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that hon- 
esty is the best policy. One of the most striking things ever said 
of him is, that " he changed man ki7iiV s ideas of political greatness''' ^ 
To commanding talents and to success, the common elements 
of such greatness, he added a disregard of self, a spotlessness of 
motive, a steady submission to every public and private duty, 
which threw far into the shade the whole crowd of vulgar great. 
The object of his regard was the whole country. No part of it 
was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His love of glory, so 
far as that may be supposed to have influenced him at all, spurned 
everything short of general approbation. It would have been 
nothing to him, that his partisans or his favorites outnumbered, 
or outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, those of other lead- 
ers. He had no favorites ; he rejected all partisanship ; and, 
acting honestly for the universal good, he deserved what he has 
so richly enjoyed, — the universal love. 

His principle it was, to act right, and to trust the people for 
support ; his principle it was, not to follow the lead of sinister and 
selfish ends, nor to rely on the little arts of party delusion to 
obtain public sanction for such a course. Born for his country 
and for the world, he did not give up to party what was meant for 
mankind. The consequence is, that his fame is as durable as 
his principles, as lasting as truth and virtue themselves. While 
the hundreds whom party excitement, and temporary circum- 
stances, and casual combinations, have raised into transient 
notoriety, sink again, like thin bubbles, bursting and dissolving 
into the great ocean, Washington's fame is like the rock which 
bounds that ocean, and at whose feet its billows are destined to 
break harmlessly forever. 

1 Works of Fisher Ames. 



8o DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The maxims upon which Washington conducted our foreign 
relations were few and simple. The first was an entire and 
indisputable impartiality towards foreign states. He adhered 
to this rule of pubhc conduct against very strong inducements to 
depart from it, and when the popularity of the moment seemed 
to favor such a departure. In the next place, he maintained true 
dignity and unsulhed honor in all communications with foreign 
states. It was among the high duties devolved upon him to in- 
troduce our new government into the circle of civilized states and 
powerful nations. Not arrogant or assuming, with no unbecom- 
ing or supercilious bearing, he yet exacted for it from all others 
entire and punctilious respect. He demanded, and he obtained 
at once, a standing of perfect equahty for his country in the 
society of nations ; nor was there a prince or potentate of his day 
whose personal character carried with it, into the intercourse of 
other states, a greater degree of respect and veneration. 

He regarded other nations only as they stood in pohtical rela- 
tions to us. With their internal affairs, their political parties and 
dissensions, he scrupulously abstained from all interference ; and, 
on the other hand, he repelled with spirit all such interference by 
others with us or our concerns. His sternest rebuke, the most 
indignant measure of his whole administration, was aimed against 
such an attempted interference. He felt it as an attempt to 
wound the national honor, and resented it accordingly. 

The reiterated admonitions in his " Farewell Address " show his 
deep fears that foreign influence would insinuate itself into our 
counsels through the channels of domestic dissension, and obtain 
a sympathy with our own temporary parties. Against all such 
dangers, he most earnestly entreats the country to guard itself. 
He appeals to its patriotism, to its self-respect, to its own honor, 
to every consideration connected with its welfare and happiness, 
to resist, at the very beginning, all tendencies towards such con- 
nection of foreign interests with our own affairs. With a tone 
of earnestness nowhere else found, even in his last affectionate 
farewell advice to his countrymen, he says, " Against the insid- 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 8 1 

ious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fel- 
low citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constant /y 
awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence 
is one of the most baneful foes of republican government." 

Lastly, on the subject of foreign relations, Washington never 
forgot that we had interests peculiar to ourselves. The primary 
political concerns of Europe, he saw, did not affect us. We had 
nothing to do with her balance of power, her family compacts, 
or her successions to thrones. We were placed in a condition 
favorable to neutrality during European wars, and to the enjoy- 
ment of all the great advantages of that relation. " ^Vhy, then," 
he asks us, " why forego the advantages of so pecuhar a situa- 
tion ? W^hy quit our own to stand upon foreign ground ? Why, 
by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, 
entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambi- 
tion, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice ? " 

Indeed, gentlemen, Washington's " Farewell Address " is full of 
truths important at all times, and particularly deserving consid- 
eration at the present. With a sagacity which brought the future 
before him, and made it like the present, he saw and pointed out 
the dangers that even at this moment most imminently threaten us. 
I hardly know how a greater service of that kind could now be 
done to the community than by a renewed and wide diffusion of 
that admirable paper, and an earnest invitation to every man in 
the country to reperuse and consider it. Its political maxims 
are invaluable; its exhortations to love of country and to 
brotherly affection among citizens, touching; and the solem- 
nity with which it urges the observance of moral duties, and im- 
presses the power of religious obligation, gives to it the highest 
character of truly disinterested, sincere, parental advice. 

The domestic policy of Washington found its polestar in tlie 
avowed objects of the Constitution itself. He sought so to 
administer that Constitution as to form a more perfect union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
6 



82 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

blessings of liberty. These were objects interesting in the high- 
est degree to the whole country ; and his policy embraced the 
whole country. 

Among his earliest and most important duties was the organ- 
ization of the government itself, the choice of his confidential 
advisers, and the various appointments to office. This duty, so 
important and delicate, when a whole government was to be 
organized, and all its offices for the first time filled, was yet not 
difficult to him ; for he had no sinister ends to accomphsh, no 
clamorous partisans to gratify, no pledges to redeem, no object 
to be regarded, but simply the public good. It was a plain, 
straightforward matter, a mere honest choice of good men for 
the. public service. 

His own singleness of purpose, his disinterested patriotism, 
were evinced by the selection of his first Cabinet, and by the 
manner in which he ffiled the seats of justice and other places 
of high trust. He sought for men fit for offices, not for offices 
which might suit men. Above personal considerations, above 
local considerations, above party considerations, he felt that he 
could only discharge the sacred trust which the country had 
placed in his hands, by a diligent inquiry after real merit, and a 
conscientious preference of virtue and talent. The whole coun- 
try was the field of his selection. He explored that whole field, 
looking only for whatever it contained most worthy and distin- 
guished. He was, indeed, most successful ; and he deserved suc- 
cess for the purity of his motives, the liberality of his sentiments, 
and his enlarged and manly policy. 

Washington's administration established the national credit, 
made provision for the public debt and for that patriotic army 
whose interests and welfare were always so dear to him, and, 
by laws wisely framed and of admirable effect, raised the com- 
merce and navigation of the country, almost at once, from de- 
pression and ruin to a state of prosperity. Nor were his eyes 
open to these interests alone. He viewed with equal concern its 
agriculture and manufactures, and, so far as they came within the 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 83 

regular exercise of the powers of this government, they experi- 
enced regard and favor. 

It should not be omitted, even in this slight reference to the 
general measures and general princii)les of the first President, 
that he saw and felt the full value and importance of the judicial 
department of the government. An upright and able administra- 
tion of the laws, he held to be ahke indispensable to private hap- 
piness and pubhc liberty. The temple of justice, in his opinion, 
was a sacred place, and he would profane and pollute it wlio 
should call any to minister in it not spotless in character, not 
incorruptible in integrity, not competent by talent and learning, 
not a fit object of unhesitating trust. 

Among other admonitions, Washington has left us, in his last 
communication to his country, an exhortation against the ex- 
cesses of party spirit. A fire not to be quenched, he yet con- 
jures us not to fan and feed the flame. Undoubtedly, gende- 
men, it is the greatest danger of our system and of our time. 
Undoubtedly, if that system sliould be overthrown, it will be the 
work of excessive party spirit, acting on the government, which 
is dangerous enough, or acting in the government, which is a 
thousand times more dangerous; for government then becomes 
nothing but organized party, and, in the strange vicissitudes of 
human affairs, it may come at last, perhaps, to exhibit the singu- 
lar paradox of government itself being in opposition to its own 
powers, at war with the very elements of its own existence. Such 
cases are hopeless. As men may be protected against murder, 
but cannot be guarded against suicide, so government may be 
shielded from the assaults of external foes ; but nothing can save 
it when it chooses to lay violent hands on itself. 

Finally, gentlemen, there was in the breast of Washington one 
sentiment so deeply felt, so constantly uppermost, that no proper 
occasion escaped without its utterance. From the letter winch 
■ he signed in behalf of the Convention when the Constitution was 
sent out to the people, to the moment when he put his hand to 
that last paper in which he addressed his countrymen, the Un.ion 



84 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

— the Union was the great object of his thoughts. In that first 
letter he tells them that, to him and his brethren of the Conven- 
tion, union appears to be the greatest interest of every true Ameri- 
can ; and in that last paper he conjures them to regard that unity 
of government which constitutes them one people, as the very 
palladium ^ of their prosperity and safety, and the security of 
liberty itself. He regarded the union of these States less as one 
of our blessings than as the great treasure-house which contained 
them all. Here, in his judgment, was the great magazine of all 
our means of prosperity ; here, as he thought, and as every true 
American still thinks, are deposited all our animating prospects, 
all our solid hopes for future greatness. He has taught us to 
maintain this union, not by seeking to enlarge the powers of the 
government, on the one hand, nor by surrendering them, on the 
other, but by an administration of them at once firm and mod- 
erate, pursuing objects truly national, and carried on in a spirit 
of justice and equity. 

The extreme sohcitude for the preservation of the Union, at 
all times manifested by him, shows not only the opinion he 
entertained of its importance, but his clear perception of those 
causes which were likely to spring up to endanger it, and which, 
if once they should overthrow the present system, would leave 
little hope of any future beneficial union. Of all the presump- 
tions indulged by presumptuous man, that is one of the rashest 
which looks for repeated and favorable opportunities for the 
dehberate establishment of a united government over distinct and 
widely extended communities. Such a thing has happened once 
in human affairs, and but once : the event stands out as a prom- 
inent exception to all ordinary history ; and, unless we suppose 
ourselves running into an age of miracles, we may not expect its 
repetition. 

Washington, therefore, could regard, and did regard, nothing 

1 Preserver. This was the name applied to the statue of Pallas Athene, 
the presence of which within the walls of Troy was believed to assure the 
preservation ot the city from the attacks of the Greeks. 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 85 

as of paramount political interest but the integrity of the Union 
itself. With a united government well administered, he saw that 
we had nothing to fear ; and without it, nothing to hope. The 
sentiment is just, and its momentous truth should solemnly 
impress the whole country. If we might regard our country as 
personated in the spirit of Washington ; if we might consider him 
as representing her in her past renown, her present prosperity, 
and her future career, and as, in that character, demanding of us 
all to account for our conduct as political men or as private 
citizens, — how should he answer him who has ventured to talk of 
disunion and dismemberment ? Or how should he answer him 
who dwells perpetually on local interests, and fans every kindling 
flame of local prejudice ? How should he answer him who 
would array State against State, interest against interest, and party 
against party, careless of the continuance of that luiity of govern- 
ment ivhich constitutes its one people ? 

The political prosperity which this country has attained, and 
which it now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the in- 
strumentahty of the present government. While this agent con- 
tinues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of pros- 
perity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life capa- 
ble of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome mis- 
fortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human 
affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest. 
But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves 
these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this 
great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we pos- 
sess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new possessions. 
It would leave the country not only bereft of its prosperity and 
happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties by which to 
exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness. 

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If 
disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, an- 
other generation may renew it ; if it exhaust our treasury, future 
industry may replenish it ; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, 



86 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and 
ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle, even if the walls of 
yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, 
and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the 
valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct 
the fabric of demolished government ? Who shall rear again 
the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty ? Who 
shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national 
sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public pros- 
perity ? No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. 
Like the Coliseum i and the Parthenon,- they will be destined to 
a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, 
will flow over them than were ever shed over the monuments of 
Roman or Grecian art ; for they will be the remnants of a more 
glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, — the edifice of 
constitutional American liberty. 

But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gracious 
Being who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow of his 
hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the 
people, and to the eflicacy of religious obligation. Let us trust 
to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that 
that fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard 
to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public 
men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in 
her happy career. Full of these gratifying anticipations and 
hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is 
now commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of 
Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere ad- 
miration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, 
as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely 
as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in 
the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose 
banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on to- 

1 The famous amphitheater at Rome, built by the Emperor Vespasian. 
'- The marble temple of Athene, on the Acropolis at Athens. 



THE CHARACTER OE WASHhWGTOX. 87 

wards the sea, so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of 
the Union floating on the top of the Capitol ; and then, as now, 
may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, 
more lovely, than this our own country ! 
Gentlemen, I propose 

"The Memory of George Washington." 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. 

A SPEECH DELIVERED ON THE 2 2D OF DECEMBER, 1 843, AT 

THE PUBLIC DINNER OF THE NEW-ENGLAND SOCIETY 

OF NEW YORK, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 



MR. PRESIDENT, I have a grateful duty to perform 
in acknowledging the kindness of the sentiment thus ex- 
pressed towards me.^ And yet I must say, gentlemen, that I rise 
upon this occasion under a consciousness that I may probably 
disappoint highly raised, too highly raised expectations. In the 
scenes of this evening, and in the scene of this day, my part is a 
humble one. I can enter into no competition with the fresher 
geniuses of those more eloquent gentlemen, learned and rever- 

1 On the 22d of December, 1843, the anniversary of the landing at Plym- 
outh was celebrated with great success by the New-England Society of New 
York. The exercises were opened with a commemorative oration by the 
Hon. Rufus Choate ; and later in the day the Society and a number of invited 
guests met at a public dinner at the Astor House. After several appropriate 
toasts had been given and responded to, George Griswold rose, and offered a 
few complimentary remarks concerning Daniel Webster. After referring to 
that gentleman's public services, to his refutation of the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion, and to the wisdom of his course in connection with the treaty of Wash- 
ington, Mr. Griswold gave the following toast : — 

" Daniel Webster, — the gift of New England to his country, his whole 
country, and nothing but his country." 

When Mr. Webster rose to respond to this toast, he was greeted with nine 
hearty and prolonged cheers ; and when quiet had been restored, he proceeded 
to deliver this address. 

88 



rilE LAXDIXG AT Pl.VMOUnf. 89 

end, who have addressed this Society. I may perform, however, 
the humbler, but sometimes useful, duty of contrast, by adding 
the dark ground of the picture, which shall serve to bring out 
the more brilhant colors. 

I must receive, gentlemen, the sentiment proposed by the 
worthy and distinguished citizen of New York before me, as in- 
tended to convey the idea, that as a citizen of New England, as 
a son, a child, a creation, of New England, I may be yet supposed 
to entertain, in some degree, that enlarged view of my duty as a 
citizen of the United States and as a public man, which may, in 
some small measure, commend me to the regard of the whole 
country. While I am free to confess, gentlemen, that there is 
no compliment of w^hich I am more desirous to be thought 
worthy, I will add, that a compliment of that kind could have 
proceeded from no source more agreeable to my own feelings 
than from the gentleman who has proposed it, — an eminent 
merchant, the member of a body of eminent merchants, known 
throughout the world for their intelligence and enterprise. I the 
more especially feel this, gentlemen, because, whether I view the 
present state of things, or recur to the history of the past, I can 
in neither case be ignorant how much that profession and its 
distinguished members, from an early day of our history, have 
contributed to make the country what it is, and the government 

what it is. 

Gentlemen, the free nature of our institutions, and the popular 
form of those governments which have come down to us from 
the Rock of Plymouth, give scope to intelligence, to talent, en- 
terprise, and public spirit, from all classes making up the great 
body of the community. And the country has received benefit, 
in all its history and in all its exigencies, of the most eminent and 
striking character, from persons of the class to which my friend 
before me belongs. Who will ever forget that the first name 
signed to our ever-memorable and ever-glorious Declaration of 
Independence is the name of John Hancock, a merchant of 
Boston ? Who will ever forget, that in the most disastrous days 



90 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

of the Revolution, when the treasury of the country was bank- 
rupt, with unpaid navies and starving armies, it was a merchant, 
— Robert Morris of Philadelphia, — who by a noble sacrifice of 
his own fortune, as well as by the exercise of his great financial 
abilities, sustained and supported the wise men of the country in 
council, and the brave men of the country in the field of battle ? 
Nor are there wanting more recent instances. I have the pleas- 
ure to see near me, and near my friend who proposed this sen- 
timent, the son of an eminent merchant of New England [Mr. 
Goodhue], an early member of the Senate of the United States, 
always consulted, always respected, in whatever belonged to the 
duty and the means of putting in operation the financial and 
commercial system of the country ; and this mention of the 
father of my friend brings to my mind the memory of his great 
coUeague, the early associate of Hamilton and of Ames, trusted 
and beloved by Washington, consulted on all occasions connected 
with the administration of the finances, the establishment of the 
treasury department, the imposition of the first rates of duty, and 
with everything that belonged to the commercial system of the 
United States, — George Cabot of Massachusetts. 

I will take this occasion to say, gentlemen, that there is no 
truth better developed and established in the history of the United 
States, from the formation of the Constitution to the present time, 
than this, — that the mercantile classes, the great commercial 
masses of the country, whose affairs connect them strongly with 
every State in the Union and with all the nations of the earth, 
whose business and profession give a sort of nationality to their 
character, — that no class of men among us, from the beginning, 
have shown a stronger and firmer devotion to whatsoever has 
been designed, or to whatever has tended, to preserve the union 
of these States and the stability of the free government under 
which we live. The Constitution of the United States, in regard 
to the various municipal regulations and local interests, has left 
the States individual, disconnected, isolated. It has left them 
their own codes of criminal law ; it has left them their own sys- 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTIL 91 

tern of municipal regulations. But there was one great interest, 
one great concern, which, from the very nature of the case, was 
no longer to be left under the regulations of the then thirteen, 
afterwards twenty, and now twenty-six States, but was com- 
mitted, necessarily committed, to the care, the protection, and 
the regulation of one government ; and this was that great unit, 
as it has been called, the commerce of the United States. There 
is no commerce of New York, no commerce of Massachusetts, 
none of Georgia, none of Alabama or Louisiana. All and singu- 
lar, in the aggregate and in all its parts, is the commerce of the 
United States, regulated at home bv a uniform svstem of laws 
under the authority of the general government, and protected 
abroad under the flag of our go\-ernment, the glorious E Pluribns 
Ujiwn} and guarded, if need be, by the power of the general 
government all over the world. There is, therefore, gentlemen, 
nothing more cementing, nothing that makes us more cohesive, 
nothing that more repels all tendencies to separation and dis- 
memberment, than this great, this common, I may say this over- 
whelming interest of one commerce, one general system of trade 
and navigation, one ever3^where and with every nation of the 
globe. There is no flag of any particular American State seen 
in the Pacific seas, or in the Baltic, or in the Indian Ocean. Who 
knows, or who hears, there of your proud State, or of my proud 
State ? Who knows, or who hears, of anything, at the extremest 
north or south, or at the antipodes ; in the remotest regions of 
the Eastern or Western sea, — who ever hears, or knows, of any- 
thing but an American ship, or of any American enterprise of a 
commercial character that does not bear the impression of the 
American Union with it ? 

It would be a presumption of which I cannot be guilty, gentle- 
men, for me to imagine for a moment, that, among the gifts 
which New England has made to our common countiy, I am 
anything more than one of the most inconsiderable. I readily 
bring to mind the great men, not only with whom I have met, 

1 One out of many, — the motto of the United States. 



92 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

but those of the generation before me, who now sleep with their 
fathers, distinguished in the Revolution, distinguished in the 
formation of the Constitution and in the early administration of 
the government, always and everywhere distinguished ; and I 
shrink in just and conscious humiliation before their estabhshed 
character and established renown ; and all that I venture to sav, 
and all that I venture to hope may be thought true in the senti- 
ment proposed, is, that so far as mind and purpose, so far as 
intention and will, are concerned, I may be found among those 
who are capable of embracing the whole country, of which they 
are members, in a proper, comprehensive, and patriotic regard. 
We all know that the objects which are nearest are the objects 
which are dearest. Family affections, neighborhood affections, 
social relations ; these, in truth, are nearest and dearest to us all : 
but whosoever shall be able rightly to adjust the graduation of 
his affections, and to love his friends and his neighbors and his 
country as he ought to love them, merits the commendation pro- 
nounced by the philosophic poet upon him 

" Qui didicit patriae quid debeat, et quid amicis."i 

Gentlemen, it has been my fortune, in the little part which I 
have acted in public life, for good or for evil to the community, 
to be connected entirely with that government, which, within the 
limits of constitutional power, exercises jurisdiction over all the 
States and all the people. My friend at the end of the table, on 
my left, has spoken pleasantly to us to-night of the reputed mira- 
cles of tutelar saints. In a sober sense, in a sense of deep con- 
viction, I say that the emergence of this country from British 
domination, and its union, under its present form of government, 
beneath the general Constitution of the country, if not a miracle, 
is, I do not say the most, but one of the most, fortunate, the most 
admirable, the most auspicious, occurrences which have ever 
fallen to the lot of man. Circumstances have wrought out for 

1 ' ' Who has learned what he owes to his country, and what to his friends. " 
— Horace. 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. 93 

us a state of things, which, in other times and other regions, phi- 
losophy has dreamed of, and theory has proposed, and speculation 
has suggested, but which man has never been able to accomplish. 
I mean the government of a great nation, over a vastly extended 
portion of the surface of the earth, by means of local institutions 
for local purposes^ and getieral institutions for general puiposes. I 
know of nothing in the history of the world, notwithstanding the 
great league of Grecian states, notwithstanding the success of the 
Roman system (and certainly there is no exception to the remark 
in modern history), — I know of nothing so suitable, on the whole, 
for the great interests of a great people spread over a large por- 
tion of the globe, as the provision of local legislation for local 
and municipal purposes, with, not a confederacy, nor a loose 
binding together of separate parts, but a limited, positive general 
government, for positive general purposes, over the whole. We 
may derive eminent proofs of this truth from the past and the 
present. What see we to-day in the agitations on the other side 
of the Atlantic ? I speak of them, of course, without expressing 
any opinion on questions of politics in a foreign country ; but I 
speak of them as an occurrence which shows the great expedi- 
ency, the utihty, I may say the necessity, of local legislation. 
If, in a country on the other side of the water [Ireland], there be 
some who desire a severance of one part of the empire from 
another, under a proposition of repeal, there are others who pro- 
pose a continuance of the existing relation under a federative 
system : and what is this ? No more and no less than an ap- 
proximation to that system under which we live, which for local 
municipal purposes shall have a local legislature, and for general 
purposes a general legislature. 

This becomes the more important when we consider that the 
United States stretch over so many degrees of latitude, that 
they embrace such a variety of climate, that various conditions 
and relations of society naturally call for different laws and regu- 
lations. Let me ask whether the Legislature of New York could 
wisely pass laws for the government of Louisiana, or whether 



94 DANIEL WEBSTER, 

the Legislature of Louisiana could wisely pass laws for Pennsyl- 
vania or New York. Everybody will say, '* No." And yet the 
interests of New York and Pennsylvania and Louisiana, in what- 
ever concerns their relations between themselves and their gen- 
eral relations with all the states of the world, are found to be per- 
fectly well provided for, and adjusted with perfect congruity, by 
committing these general interests to one common government, 
the result of popular general elections among them all. 

I confess, gentlemen, that having been, as I have said, in my 
humble career in public life, employed in that portion of the pub- 
lic service which is connected with the general government, I 
have contemplated, as the great object of every proceeding, not 
only the particular benefit of the moment, or the exigency of the 
occasion, but the preservation of this system ; for I do consider 
it so much the result of circumstances, and that so much of it is 
due to fortunate concurrence as well as to the sagacity of the 
great men acting upon those occasions, that it is an experiment 
of such remarkable and renowned success, that he is a fool or 
a madman who would wish to try that experiment a second time. 
I see to-day, and we all see, that the descendants of the Puritans, 
who landed upon the Rock of Plymouth ; the followers of 
Raleigh, who settled Virginia and North Carolina ; he who lives 
where the truncheon of empire, so to speak, was borne by Smith ; 
the inhabitants of Georgia ; he who settled, under the auspices of 
France, at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the Swede on the Dela- 
ware; the Quaker of Pennsylvania, — all find at this day their 
common interest, their common protection, their common glory, 
under the united government, which leaves them all, nevertheless, 
in the administration of their own municipal and local affairs, to 
be Frenchmen, or Swedes, or Quakers, or whatever they choose. 
And when one considers that this system of government, I will 
not say has produced, because God and nature and circum- 
stances have had an agency in it, — but when it is considered 
that this system has not prevented, but has rather encouraged, 
the growth of the people of this country from three millions on 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. 95 

the glorious 4th of July, 1776, to seventeen millions now, who 
is there that will say, upon this hemisphere, nay, who is there that 
will stand up in any hemisphere, who is there in any part of the 
world, that will say that the great experiment of a united repub- 
lic has failed in America ? And yet I know, gentlemen, I feel, 
that this united system is held together by strong tendencies to 
union, at the same time that it is kept from too much leaning to- 
wards consolidation by a strong tendency in the several States 
to support each its own power and consideration. In the phvsi- 
cal world it is said, that 

"All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace," 

and there is in the political world this same harmonious difference, 
this regular play of the posidve and negative powers (if I may so 
say), which, at least for one glorious half century, has kept us as 
we have been kept, and made us what we are. 

But, gentlemen, I must not allow myself to pursue this topic. 
It is a sentiment so commonly repeated by me upon all public 
occasions, and upon all private occasions, and everywhere, that 
I forbear to dwell upon it now. It is the union of these States, 
it is the system of government under which we live, beneath the 
Constitution of the United States, happily framed, wisely adopted, 
successfully administered for fifty years, — it is mainly this, I say, 
that gives us power at home and credit abroad. And, for one, 
I never stop to consider the power, or wealth, or greatness of a 
State. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, I care nothing for your Empire 
State as such. Delaware and Rhode Island are as high in my 
regard as New York. In population, in power, in the govern- 
ment over us, you have a greater share. You would have the 
same share, if you were divided into forty States. It is not, 
therefore, as a State sovereignty, it is only because New York 
is a vast portion of the whole American people, tliat I regard 
this State, as I always shall regard her, as respectable ^ and honor 
able. But among State sovereignties there is no preference ; 

' See note, p. 50. 



g6 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

there is nothing high and nothing low ; every State is independent, 
and every State is equal. If we depart from this great principle, 
then are we no longer one people, but we are thrown back 
again upon the Confederation, and upon that state of things in 
which the inequality of the States produced all the evils which 
befell us in times past, and a thousand ill-adjusted and jarring 
interests. 

Mr. President, I wish, then, without pursuing these thoughts, 
without especially attempting to produce any fersdd impression 
by dwelling upon them, to take this occasion to answer my friend 
who has proposed the sentiment, and to respond to it by saying, 
that whoever would serve his countrv in this our dav, with what- 
ever degree of talent, great or small, it may have pleased the 
Almighty Power to give him, he cannot serve it, he will not serve 
it, unless he be able, at least, to extend his political designs, pur- 
poses, and objects, till they shall comprehend the whole country 
of which he is a servant. 

Sir, I must say a word in connection with that event which 
we have assembled to commemorate. It has seemed fit to the 
dwellers in New York, New Englanders by birth or descent, to 
form this society. They have formed it for the relief of the poor 
and distressed, and for the purpose of commemorating annually 
the great event of the settlement of the country from which they 
spring. It would be great presumption in me to go back to the 
scene of that settlement, or to attempt to exhibit it in any colors, 
after the exhibition made to-day ; yet it is an event that in all 
time since, and in all time to come, and more in times to come 
than in times past, must stand out m great and striking charac- 
teristics to the admiration of the world. The sun's return to his 
winter's solstice, in 1620, is the epoch from which he dates his 
first acquaintance with the small people, now one of the happiest, 
and destined to be one of the greatest, that his rays fall upon ; 
and his annual visitation, from that day to this, to our frozen 
region, has enabled him to see that progress, progress, was the 
characteristic of that small people. He has seen them, from a 



THE LANDING AT TLYMOUTII. 97 

handful that one of his beams coming through a keyhole might 
illuminate, spread over a hemisphere which he cannot enlighten 
under the slightest eclipse. Nor, though this globe should re- 
volve round him for tens of hundreds of thousands of years, will 
he see such another incipient colonization upon any part of this 
attendant upon his mighty orb. What else he may see in those 
other planets which revolve around him, we cannot tell, at least 
until we have tried the hfty-foot telescope which Lord Rosse is 
preparing for that purpose. 

There is not, gentlemen, and we may as well admit it, in any 
history of. the past, another epoch from which so many great 
events have taken a turn, — events which, while important to us, 
are equally important to the country from whence we came. The 
settlement of Plymouth — concurring, I always wish to be under- 
stood, with that of Virginia — was the settlement of New England 
by colonies of Old England. Now, gentlemen, take these two 
ideas, and run out the thoughts suggested by both. What has 
been, and what is to be. Old England ? What has been, what 
is, and what may be, in the providence of God, N'e7V England, 
with her neighbors and associates ? I would not dwell, gentle- 
men, with any particular emphasis upon the sentiment, which I 
nevertheless entertain, with respect to the great diversity in the 
races of men. I do not know how far, in that respect, I might not 
encroach on those mysteries of Providence, which, while I adore, 
I may not comprehend ; but it does seem to me to be very re- 
markable that we may go back to the time when New England, 
or those who founded it, were subtracted from Old England, and 
both Old England and New England went on, nevertheless, in 
their mighty career of progress and power. 

Let me begin with New England for a moment. What has 
resulted, embracing, as I say, the nearly contemporaneous settle- 
ment of Virginia, — what has resulted from the planting upon this 
continent of two or three slender colonies from the mother coun- 
try ? Gentlemen, the great epitaph commemorative of the char- 
acter and the worth, the discoveries and glory, of Columbus, was, 

7 



98 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

that he \md given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Arago?i. 
Gentlemen, this is a great mistake. It does not come up at all 
to the great merits of Columbus. He gave the territory of the 
southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile and Aragon ; but as 
a place for the plantation of colonies, as a place for the habita- 
tion of men, as a place to which laws and religion and manners 
and science were to be transferred, as a place in which the 
creatures of God should multiply and fill the earth, under friendly 
skies and with rehgious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, he 
ga^^e it to universal man ! Trom this seminal principle, and from 
a handful, — a hundred saints, blessed of God and ever honored 
of men, landed on the shores of Plymouth, and elsewhere along 
the coast, united, as I have said already more than once, in the 
process of time, with the settlement at Jamestown, — has sprung 
this great people of which we are a portion. 

I do not reckon myself among quite the oldest of the land ; 
and yet it so happens that very recently I recurred to an exult- 
ing speech or oration of my own,i \^ which I spoke of my coun- 
try as consisting of nine millions of people. I could hardly per- 
suade myself, that, within the short time which had elapsed since 
that epoch, our population had doubled ; and that at the present 
moment there does exist most unquestionably as great a proba- 
bility of its continued progress in the same ratio as has ever 
existed in any previous time. I do not know whose imagination 
is fertile enough, I do not know Avhose conjectures, I may almost 
say, are wild enough, to tell what may be the progress of wealth 
and population in the United States in half a century to come. 
All we know is, here is a people of from seventeen to twenty mil- 
lions, intelligent, educated, freeholders, freemen, republicans, pos- 
sessed of all the means of modern improvement, modern science, 
arts, literature, with the world before them ! There is nothing 
to check them till they touch the shores of the Pacific,^ and then, 

1 Oration on the First Settlement of New England, Dec. 22, 1820. 

2 Five years later, gold was discovered in California, and the first great 
movement of settlers towards the Pacific coast was begun. 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. 99 

they are so much accustomed to water, that iJiafs a facihty and 
no obstruction ! 

So much, gentlemen, for this branch of the Enghsh race. But 
what has happened, meanwhile, to England herself, since the 
period of the departure of the Puritans from the coast of Lin- 
colnshire, from the English Boston ? Gendemen, in speaking of 
the progress of English power, of English dominion and author- 
ity, from that period to the present, I shall be understood, of 
course, as neither entering into any defense, or any accusation, 
of the policy which has conducted her to her present state. As 
to the justice of her wars, the necessity of her conquests, the pro- 
priety of those acts by which she has taken possession of so great 
a portion of tlie globe, it is not the business of the present occa- 
sion to inquire. N'eque tenco, neqiie refcUoy But I speak of 
them, or intend to speak of them, as facts of the most extraordi- 
nary character, unequaled in the history of any nation on the 
globe, and the consequences of which may and must reach 
through a thousand generations. The Puritans left I^ngland in 
the reign of James I. England herself had then become some- 
what settled and estabhshed in the Protestant faith, and in the 
quiet enjoyment of property, by the previous energetic, long, 
and prosperous reign of EHzabeth. Her successor was James 
VI. of Scotland, now become James L of England ; and here 
was a union of the crowns, but not of the kingdoms, — a very 
important distinction. Ireland was held by a military power; 
and one cannot but see that at that day, whatever may be 
true or untrue in more recent periods of her history, Ireland 
was held by England by the two great potencies, — the power of 
the sword and the power of confiscation. In other respects, 
England was nothing like the England which we now behold. 
Her foreign possessions were quite inconsiderable. She had some 
hold on the West India Islands ; she had Acadia, or Nova Scotia, 
which King James granted, by wholesale, for the endowment of 
the knights whom he created by hundreds. And what has been 

1 I neither support nor confute. 



loo DANIEL WEBSTER. 

her progress ? Did she then possess GibraUar, the key to the 
Mediterranean ? Did she possess a port in the Mediterranean ? 
Was Maka hers ? Were the Ionian Islands hers ? Was the 
southern extremity of Africa, was the Cape of Good Hope hers ? 
Were the whole of her vast possessions in India hers ? Was her 
great Australian empire hers ? While that branch of her popula- 
tion which followed the western star, and under its guidance 
committed itself to the duty of settling, fertilizing,, and peopling 
an unknown wilderness in the West, were pursuing their destinies, 
other causes, providential doubtless, were leading English power 
eastward and southward, in consequence and by means of her 
naval prowess and the extent of her commerce, until in our day 
we have seen that within the Mediterranean, on the western coast 
and at the southern extremity of Africa, in Arabia, in hither 
India and farther India, she has a population ten times as great 
as that of the British Isles two centuries ago. And recently, as 
we have witnessed, — I will not say with how much truth and 
justice, policy or impolicy; I do not speak at all to the morality 
of the action, I only speak to the fact, — she has found admission 
into China, and has carried the Christian rehgion and the Prot- 
estant faith to the doors of three hundred millions of people.^ 

It has been said that whosoever would see the Eastern world 
before it turns into a Western world, must make his visit soon, 
because steamboats and omnibuses, commerce, and all the arts of 
Europe, are extending themselves from Egypt to Suez, from Suez 
to the Indian seas, and from the Indian seas all over the explored 
regions of the still farther East. 

Now, gentlemen, I do not know what practical views, or what 
practical results, may take place from this great expansion of the 
power of the two branches of Old England. It is not for me to 
say. I only can see, that on this continent <?// is to be Aiiglo- 
American, from Plymouth Rock to the Pacific seas, from the 

1 The war between China and Great Britain, known as tlie " opium war," 
which began in 1834, was ended by tlie treaty of Aug. 26, 1842. By the 
conditions of this treaty, Hong-Kong was ceded to tlie British. 



THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. loi 

north pole to California.^ That is certain ; and in the Eastern 
world I only see that you can hardly place a finger on a map of 
the world, and be an iiicJi from an English settlement. 

Gentlemen, if there be anything in the supremacy of races, the 
experiment now in progress will develop it. If there be any truth 
in the idea that those who issued from the great Caucasian foun- 
tain, and spread over Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, 
and to act on the whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor 
our children, nor our grandchildren, to see it, but it will be for 
our descendants of some generation to see the extent of that 
progress and dominion of the favored races. 

For myself, I beheve there is no limit fit to be assigned to it 
by the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restric- 
tion on the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and 
stimulus on the other hand, in these branches of a common race, 
the great principle of the freedom of Inimaji tJiought and the re- 
spectalnliiy of individual character. I find everywhere an eleva- 
tion of the character of man as man, an elevation of the individual 
as a component part of society. I find everywhere a rebuke of 
the idea that the many are made for the few, or that govern- 
ment is anything but an agency for mankind. And I care not 
beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid ; I care not of 
what complexion, white or brown ; I care not under what cir- 
cumstances of climate or cultivation, — if I can find a race of 
men on an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it 
is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is made for 
man, — man as a religious, moral, and social being, — and not 
man for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity and 
happiness. 

1 It is well to remember, that, when these words were spoken, California 
was a province of Mexico, inhabited only by Indians and a few people of 
Spanish descent. 



Eclectic English Classics. 



ARNOLD'S SOHRAB AND RUSTUM. 

DE FOE'S HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 

EMERSON'S THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. SELF-RELI- 
ANCE, COMPENSATION. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER. 

IRVING'S SKETCH BOOK (Ten selectionsV 

IRVING'S TALES np A TRAVELER. 

MaCAULAY'S oECoND ESSAY ON CHATHA;>i. 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. 

MACAU LAY'S ESSAY ON ADDISON. 

MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS 
LYCIDAS. 

SCOTT'S 'IVANHOE. 

SCOTT'S MARMION. 

SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE, 

SCOTT'S THE ABBOT. 

SCOTT'S WOODS' JCK. 

SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS C/^SAR. 

SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT. 

SHAKESPEARE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

SHAKESPEARE'S MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS (Tho Spectator). 

WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATIONS. 



AMERICAN BO 

New York Cine 




MPANY 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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